Mobile marketers may all be playing on the same field, but all are not playing on the same team. In this scenario, the teams are the biggest and baddest smartphone operating systems in existence: Google’s Android, Apple’s iOS, and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry.
But the latest research information presented by Gartner indicates that the winning “team” – that is, the team with the greatest market exposure and likely advertising potential – could very well be Android. Sales of devices running Android exceeded 10.6 million in the second quarter of this year alone. That’s a substantial increase from just 756,000 during the same period in 2009.
According to Gartner Research vice president Carolina Milanesi, “A non-exclusive strategy that produces products selling across many communication service providers, and the backing of so many device manufacturers, which are bringing more attractive devices to market at several different price points, were among the factors that yielded its growth this quarter.”
Gartner says global smartphone sales topped 61.6 million units in the second quarter of 2010.
At present, Google’s Android platform accounts for better than 17 percent of the entire smartphone market, surpassing Apple’s iOS and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry to effectively become the top-selling smartphone operating system in the United States today.