The latest quarterly report from IDC on mobile phones shows that Google is the undisputed king of the smartphone world. Out of 181 million smartphones shipped last quarter, 75 percent were running Android.
High-profile phones like the HTC One series and Samsung's Galaxy S III helped create these record numbers — that and the precipitous decline of BlackBerry and Symbian devices.
Google and Apple continued to divvy up the users fleeing RIM and Nokia's flagging platforms, each adding millions of customers. But if Apple's year-over-year gain was huge — 27 million units shipped last quarter versus 17 million the same period last year — then Google's was tremendous, doubling the rate at which Android phones are being shipped.
136 million Android phones were sold between July and September; that's more in three months than all the smartphones sold in 2007, IDC points out.
Android and iOS shipped 105 million and 26 million phones respectively in the previous quarter, meaning Google's growth was recent and rapid.
Microsoft's Windows Phone has hardly taken the market by storm, and its 3.6 million phones shipped may look like a rounding error compared with the competition, but it has doubled its presence year-over-year, likely due to the excellent phones designed by Nokia. With Windows Phone 8 and a number of nice-looking devices coming out over the next few months, that growth, while modest, could easily continue.
More data, analysis, and charts can be found at IDC's summary of their report.
Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital. His personal website is coldewey.cc.
