IDC today revealed that 301.3 million smartphones shipped worldwide during the second quarter. The company said it’s the first time shipments have exceeded 300 million.
Android and iOS together accounted for 96.4 percent of the shipments, meaning bad news for competitors, particularly BlackBerry. The Canadian OEM shipped 1.5 million smartphones to grab 0.5 percent share. That number is down from 2.8 percent share in the year-ago quarter and paltry enough to mark a -78 percent annual growth rate for the company’s smartphone shipments.
Windows Phone fared better, shipping 7.4 million smartphones and nabbing 2.5 percent share. But those numbers were both down annually from 8.2 million units shipped and 3.4 percent share, sticking the OS with a -9.4 percent growth rate.
The bulk of deluge belonged to Android, which rode out on 255.3 million devices during the quarter, good enough for an 84.7 percent share. The total marks a 33.3 percent annual growth rate for Android smartphone shipments, which accounted for 79.6 percent of shipments in the year-ago quarter.
“With many of its OEM partners focusing on the sub-$200 segments, Android has been reaping huge gains within emerging markets,” Ramon Llamas, Research Manager with IDC’s Mobile Phone team, said in a statement. He said that 58.6 percent of all Android devices shipped cost less than $200 off contract. Llamas expects the introduction of Android One to drive that percentage even higher.
Apple shipped 35.2 million iPhones during the quarter, registering a 12.7-percent growth rate even as its global shipment share shrunk annually from 13 percent to 11.7 percent.
