Android turn four, hits 75% market share

Android turn four, hits 75% market share
He might look unassuming but this little droid is taking over the world

In just four short years, Android has become the world's biggest smartphone OS with Google's behemoth currently holding 75 per cent of the market.

That's up from 57.5 per cent in Q3 2011, a massive jump of 91.5 per cent across the year.

It's no surprise that Symbian has been the biggest loser over the past twelve months (down 77.3 per cent) given that Nokia is winding up the OS and moving its efforts on to Windows Phone. Android and its army of budget handsets have mopped up a lot of these users.

Win Pho

Microsoft's OS is up 140 per cent but still only holds a 2 per cent share of smartphones (and a handful of these will still be Windows Mobile devices, can you believe it).

After Symbian, BlackBerry OS is the share-shedder to beat; its share of users fell by 34.7 per cent across the year, although it is still the third-biggest OS with 4.3 per cent of the Q3 2012 market.

Android and iOS are nigh-on uncatchable now; iOS holds a 14.9 per cent share of the market, even with it's often-eyewatering pricetags. The two warring OSes hold 90 per cent of smartphone users.

These figures come from IDC, which tracks the smartphone market quarterly - the company stresses that these are early figures but won't be too far off the mark.

With the alluring specs of the Google Nexus 4 coming in at way under any other top-end smartphone, cost-wise, we wouldn't be surprised to see Google increase its lead even further over the next year.

From Android Police

News Editor (UK)

Former UK News Editor for TechRadar, it was a perpetual challenge among the TechRadar staff to send Kate (Twitter, Google+) a link to something interesting on the internet that she hasn't already seen. As TechRadar's News Editor (UK), she was constantly on the hunt for top news and intriguing stories to feed your gadget lust. Kate now enjoys life as a renowned music critic – her words can be found in the i Paper, Guardian, GQ, Metro, Evening Standard and Time Out, and she's also the author of 'Amy Winehouse', a biography of the soul star.