A report has just come out of the famous research firm Gartner, that says that in the last quarter of 2011, sales of Android smartphones exceeded 50% market share globally. Although Google has suffered a slight decline in market share, sales from the same period last year increased from 30.5% to nearly 51% in Q4 2011, further gaining on its rival, Apple’s iOS.

Symbian has been losing ground rapidly since Nokia gave up the operating system in favor of Windows Mobile. However, Microsoft did not receive more than 1.9 percent, overtaken even by Bada which received 2.1% of sales.

Samsung, as the most ‘valuable’ representative of Android phones, can be attributed for the high sales ratio in the second half of 2011. Samsung sold about 92 million devices in the last quarter. The customer appreciation regarding devices such as Samsung Galaxy S2 was also felt, and this year we expect the numbers to grow with the release of Samsung Galaxy S3 which will have Android on board as well.

More interestingly, we are starting to see some serious quality coming out of ZTE, and from Huawei especially. The devices we had the privilege of experiencing at CES from Huawei, including the Ascend P1, and the P1S we’re some of the best hardware we’ve yet seen to date. More competition, more quality, better prices. What’s not to love?

Of course, Research in Motion is lagging behind, putting BlackBerry on the 4th position, immediately after Symbian. It may be that the plan to populate the RIM BlackBerry App World with Android applications for their operating system will cause an increase in sales, in the future – or not.

Anything stopping the Android freight train? I think not.