Android is a Growth Juggernaut, But Apple’s No Slouch

Market research firm IDC released its report on the global smartphone market for the first quarter of 2012, which showed Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android and Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iOS as the clear winners by far.

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Android shipments chalked up a growth of an awesome 145 percent with shipments totaling 89.9 million units. iPhone shipments were also up strongly by 88.7 percent to 35.1 million units. These numbers translate into a 59 percent market share for Google and 23 percent for Apple.

Smartphones powered by Nokia’s (NYSE:NOK) Symbian were in a free fall – down 60.6 percent to 10.4 million units. Research in Motion’s (NASDAQ:RIMM) BlackBerry was the other casualty, with shipments sliding 29.7 percent to just 9.7 million units. According to IDC, Symbian’s market share is at a nadir of 6.8 percent while BlackBerry is at 6.4 percent.

Windows phones, hitherto comatose, wiggled a finger of life with the help of Nokia’s Lumia phone range – sales grew to 3.3 million units from 2.6 million units. However the absolute number increase was small comfort given that Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) market share still dropped to 2.2 percent from 2.6 percent.

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