Google's Android OS market share increased to 81 percent, which was 74.9 percent a year ago. It has surpassed the Apple’s iOS, used on its iPhones. Although iPhone sales rose to 25.6 percent from a year earlier, but the growth was slower than the overall market. Apple's share also fell down in the same period last year to 12.9 percent from 14.4 percent.
On the other hand the Windows Phone grabbed the number three position with the 3.6 percent market share, up from two percent a year earlier. The Windows Phone sales rose 156 percent, with more than 90 percent made by the Finnish company Nokia. Nokia’s handset division is set to be purchased by Microsoft.The downfall can be seen in Research In Motion Limited (RIM)s BlackBerry. The market shares of the BlackBerry fell from 4.1 percent to 1.7 percent a year ago. Although, RIM has introduced the new operating system BlackBerry 10 but the sale of its BlackBerry device fell 41.6 percent from a year ago.
Despite the rise and fall of market shares of different smartphone company’s market share the overall smartphone market rose 39.9 percent year-over-year in the quarter, to 261 million units. The IDC survey further revealed that the average sales price of a smartphone fell 12.5 percent in the quarter to $317. The IDC analyst Ramon Llamas said that the Android and Windows Phone start to make continued to make considerable trade, despite their difference in market share, in the third quarter of the year. He was of the view that Price is the significant key behind the success of both competitors.
Both the companies Google and Microsoft have a wide range of collection available at the very low cost. These products are affordable enough for the mass market and role of mass market is most important in the prosperity of entire market.
Despite the introduction two new iPhones namely iPhone 5S and iPhone 5c in the month of September the market share of Apple was probably affected by the weak sale of products, at the end of the quarter of this year. The IDC survey said that despite the downfall in market share Apple sold nine million of the new devices in the first weekend, suggesting a strong fourth quarter.
The large devices namely Phablets’ sale up from the 3 percent a year ago, accounted for 21 percent of the smartphone market, said IDC report. The IDC's Ryan Reith said that the increase in the sale is most probably due to all the successful Android vendors, who have added one or more five- to seven-inch phablets to their product collections. He further mentioned that the inability of Apple in contributing the growing market is the absence of large screen devices in the third quarter of the current year.
