This quarter Apple reached an important milestone – it sold its billionth iOS device (that's since the first one). Meanwhile, 1 billion Androids shipped over the last year alone, as reported by Strategy Analytics. The analyst firm estimates 1.3 billion smartphones were shipped in 2014, of that over 1 billion ran Android (this works out to 81% market share).

Global Smartphone OS Shipments (Millions of Units) Q4 '13 2013 Q4 '14 2014 Android 227.3 780.8 291.7 1042.7 Apple iOS 51.0 153.4 74.5 192.7 Microsoft 9.6 35.8 11.3 38.8 Others 2.3 20.0 2.6 9.3 Total 290.2 990.0 380.1 1283.5

Smartphone shipments grew 30% compared to 2013 (from 1B to 1.3B). Androids alone went from 0.8B to 1B in that period, while iOS lost some ground in terms of market share. It still shipped around 193 million devices, up from 153 million units in 2013.

The third horse in the race, Windows Phone, kept pace with the growth of the market and stayed at 3% share (shipping just under 39 million units).

Strategy Analytics did not release a breakdown by manufacturer, but we know from quarterly reports that Apple is rolling in the dough with record sales. Earlier the analysts reported that Samsung and iOS sales for Q4 2014 were even in terms of devices sold. Despite this, Samsung has been seen its earnings slip, but other companies have been bouncing back.

Global Smartphone OS Marketshare (%) Q4 '13 2013 Q4 '14 2014 Android 78.3% 78.9% 76.7% 81.2% Apple iOS 17.6% 15.5% 19.6% 15.0% Microsoft 3.3% 3.6% 3.0% 3.0% Others 0.8% 2.0% 0.7% 0.7% Total 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%









Total Growth: Year-over-Year (%) 33.7% 41.4% 31.0% 29.6%

BlackBerry did not make it into the report, it falls into the Others category, which has a total share of 0.7% (down from 2% in 2013).

Source | Via