More than half of smartphones are Android

MORE THAN HALF of all smartphones sold in the third quarter were running Android, according to data from analyst Gartner.

Google's Android operating system (OS) accounted for 52.5 per cent of smartphone sales, almost double the market share it had a year earlier, Gartner said.

Gartner analyst Roberta Cozza said, "Android benefited from more mass-market offerings, a weaker competitive environment, and the lack of exciting new products on alternative operating systems."

Not surprisingly, Nokia's Symbian OS lost 20 percentage points from the previous year, accounting for 17 per cent of smartphone sales.

Microsoft's Windows Phone had only 1.5 per cent market share in the third quarter, but Windows Phone 7.5 Mango handsets are only just starting to ship in the fourth quarter.

RIM, which has suffered from severe service outages recently, declined 4.4 percentage points from a year earlier to capture 11 per cent of the smartphone market in the third quarter.

Smartphone sales grew by 42 per cent and accounted for 26 per cent of overall mobile phone sales.

Overall, the global mobile handset market gained 5.6 percent in the third quarter to 440.5 million phones.

Nokia retained the top spot with a 23.9 per cent of the overall mobile phone market, up from 22.8 percent in the second quarter. Samsung, LG, Apple, and ZTE were the other four that made up the top five vendors. µ