Gartner: Nearly 82 percent of smartphones sold run Android

Nearly 82 percent of smartphones sold worldwide in the final months of 2016 run Android. That’s what analyst firm Gartner claims. Because iOS is still good for almost 18 percent, 0.4 percent remains for Windows Phone, BlackBerry and the rest.

The share of Android is still growing and compared to the last months of 2015, an additional percentage point will be added, claims Gartner. The analyst firm relies on figures of deliveries from manufacturers and also has sources of information from, for example, retailers to make the calculations.

Throughout the year, Android’s dominance is even greater. Over the whole of 2016, 84.8 percent of smartphones were equipped with Google’s mobile operating system, although this also concerns models that run Android, but do not have Google services on board. In the last months of the year, new iPhones are invariably in the shops and they provide a larger market share for iOS than in the rest of the year.

Windows 10 Mobile has a market share of 0.3 percent, compared to 1.1 percent in the same period a year earlier. The decline is mainly due to a lack of new models. Microsoft itself only released the Lumia 650, while HP came with the Elite x3 and Alcatel released a limited variant of its Idol 4S with Windows 10 Mobile. BlackBerry has switched to Android and its operating system BlackBerry 10 drops to 0.0 percent in the figures. All other operating systems add up to 0.1 percent.

The smartphone market continues to rise. In the final months of 2016, this was an increase of 7 percent compared to the same period a year earlier. In total, all manufacturers together sold more than 430 million smartphones within three months, according to the analyst firm.