Justin Kahn
Posts: 752 +6
Android and iOS smartphone shipments grew 6.1% year-over-year in 2013, making up for 93.8% of all smartphone shipments in the year, according to IDC's latest figures. Q4 2013 numbers saw the two dominate platforms increase even further to account for 95.7% off all smartphones shipped, 4 percentage points higher than the same time the previous year.
As we previously saw when IDC reported that smartphone shipments hit the 1 billion mark, Samsung dominated shipments followed by Motorola and Huawei once again pushing Android shipment growth well ahead of iOS.
Although Apple's mobile platform continued its positive trend, it experienced the lowest shipment growth at 6.7% for the quarter and 12.9% for the year. Due in large part to Nokia, Windows Phone on the other hand posted the largest shipment increases, 46.7% on the quarter and 90.9% for the year. As you might have imagined, BlackBerry continued its downward spiral dipping -40.9 percentage points over the year.
In its latest report, IDC also says the era of double digit yearly growth is likely to end overall and that these kinds of numbers only have a few years left. While marketing campaigns continue to be focused on flagship devices, the group's research shows that consumer interest is rapidly shifting towards lower cost devices.
