Although there are many in the general public who are still confused or unsure of what Android actually is, you can’t deny it’s made an impact on the mobile market. Even those who don’t know Android per se, at least know about the Galaxy series or the One series. They’ve likely seen different Android tablets at the big box stores and have played around with an Android phone here and there. Android is everywhere now.
And the latest research from IDC definitely backs up this claim. As you can see in the chart below Android dominated the market in Q3. A mind blowing 75% of all smart phones shipped in Q3 of 2024 were powered by Android OS. That 75% breaks down into 136 million devices world wide. It’s a huge jump over the same quarter last year where only 71 million devices were shipped (which is still a huge number).
These numbers are pretty amazing to me, and in my opinion, these numbers could still have some space to grow. As I said earlier, the general public is still a little bit in the dark about Android. They know the manufacturers and some of the flagship devices, but they are still learning about the OS itself. And I can’t blame them. Google has never really made a big effort to educate the public as to what Android is. But I feel like over the last couple of years, the manufacturers have began to take on that role. They have all began to push harder in advertising and in highlighting key features of the OS. And now with Google having an official Nexus line up, I can imagine that they’ll begin to do their own advertising to inform the public about their high-end/low-cost devices.
There are a couple of things that could cut into these numbers however. Windows Phone 8 is official and, from what I’ve seen, it has potential. Pair this with the launch of Windows 8 and Windows 8 RT and Microsoft has an entire unified (kind of) line up of devices. The other thing that could cut into Androids market share is BB10. There’s only been a few videos of BB10 here and there, but it too looks like it has a lot of potential. The challenge for both OS’s is going to be app development. We’ll have to wait and see how the smart phone wars pan out.
[IDC]