Google Android sales have dominated the worldwide mobile landscape for the last several years, and China is largely responsible for that dominance. According to research from Informa Telecoms & Media, China accounts for one-third of all Google Android handsets.
The research firm notes that two-thirds of handsets sold in China in the past year were powered by Google Android powered handsets.
In the United States where Google controls an 11% share, the company is expected to account for one out of ever two mobile phones purchased in 2013.
Malik Saadi, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, reveals:
“Despite the economic downturn, the global smartphone market is enjoying healthy growth and consumers are actually spending more to acquire more technologically-advanced devices. It is estimated that around 786 million smartphone devices were sold in 2012 (including the devices powered by non-certified variants of Android that are proliferating in China), which is 45% more than the total number of smartphones sold in 2011.”
The Chinese smartphone market experienced 85% year-over-year growth in 2012. While Android smartphones continue to exceed expectations in China, the Apple iOS platform has managed just a 5% market share in the country.
Analysts warn that Google Android’s market share will likely begin to falter by 2016 as more alternative mobile OS enter the market place. With Windows Phone 8 showing improvement over prior Windows mobile OS and Firefox prepping a low-cost HTML5 based alternative, the market is definitely shrinking. Android could also face competition from the BlackBerry 10 OS, which has so far received decent early reviews.
