Android and iOS Capture a 92% Share of Global Smartphone Shipments in Q4 2012

According to Strategy Analytics, it seems that Google's Android and Apple's iOS , together, have covered in the fourth quarter of 2012, as many as 92% of the smartphone market, leaving really only the crumbs to competitors, such as from Microsoft and RIM, hoping that the new Windows Phone 8 and Blackberry 10 OS should turn the tide.

Globally, in 2012, 700 million smartphones were sold, a number significantly higher than the 490.5 million sold in 2011. The last quarter of last year, the one that goes from October to December, saw the sale of 217 million phones (more than a quarter of the total), while the fourth quarter of 2011 had been sold "only" 158.6 million phones .

The research also shows that, of the total 700 million phones sold last year, well 479 million use the Google's Android OS, 135.8 million were iPhones and only 85.3 million phones were sold by the competition, including the Nokia Lumia smartphones.

In percentage terms, however, the 68.4% of the smartphone market for the year 2012 belonged to Google Android (In 2011, Google's mobile OS covered less than half of the market), 19.4% was from Apple (who in 2011 had a market share of 19%) and the remaining 12.2% is for other competitors, including Windows Phone and RIM. Even these numbers show major difference if you focus on the fourth quarter: Android had 70.1% of the market, Apple 22% and for the other only 7.9%. Summing the market shares of Google and Apple operating systems, we arrive at over 92%, a predominance downright embarrassing.

Via ;