Analyst firm, Gartner, has published its mobile phone sales figures for the fourth quarter of 2012. While overall mobile phone shipments fell slightly year on year (YoY), smartphone shipments were up from approximately 151 million units to 208 million units. Of interest in the smartphone sector was the levels of growth of each smartphone platform's market share. Blackberry and Symbian took huge declines, 60% YoY and 90% YoY, respectively, with iOS declining by 11% YoY. Meanwhile Android and Windows Phone showed positive growth with YoY increases of 36% and 67% respectively.
It's also worth noting from these figures that Gartner have put Windows Phone under the title of Microsoft and which may or may not include residual Windows Mobile figures, and that Windows Phone was still in fourth place behind Blackberry.
Blackberry have recently made an attempt to maintain their place in the market with the release of the Z10 and Q10 running the Blackberry 10 operating system. It's common knowledge that it's Blackberry and Windows Phone fighting it out for third place, however, the trends in the market figures indicate that Windows Phone will overtake Blackberry, but we have yet to see the effect on sales of the renewed Blackberry operating system and product line.
