by 
Updated on December 10, 2021
A study by research firm Gartner has revealed that smartphone sales are still growing, though growth last year was the slowest since 2008. The study also revealed that Android and iOS now dominate smartphone operating system marketspace. The two OSes have a combined 98.4% market share. Below are the current shares of smartphone operating systems:
| Smartphone OS | 2015 market share (%) |
|---|---|
| Android | 80.7% |
| iOS | 17.7% |
| Windows | 1.1% |
| Blackberry | 0.2% |
| Others | 0.2% |
Quite a change from 2009, when I bought my very first smartphone:
| Smartphone OS | 2009 market share (%) |
| Research In Motion (Blackberry) | 46.9% |
| iPhone OS | 14.4% |
| Microsoft Windows Mobile | 8.7% |
| Linux | 4.7% |
| Android | 3.9% |
| WebOS | 0.7% |
| Others | 0.6% |
Blackberry’s taken quite a fall in six years’ time. It’s gone from a near-majority in 2009 to being at the same level as miscellaneous mobile OSes. Meanwhile, WebOS has died, while Android has skyrocketed to near-dominance, though iOS is still huge.
But overall, for the average person, their choices are now basically Android or iOS. Even Windows’ mobile OS has a bigger share than the various attempts at a new mobile OS, such as Ubuntu Linux‘s mobile OS. I suppose it’s reflective of their desktop/laptop OS counterparts, where Windows and OS X dominate with a combined 98.3% of the market. Linux (and a few other operating systems) make up the remaining 1.7%, of course.
