The Strategy Analytics data below is a version of the data that we reported on yesterday, but with a categorisation by smartphone platform, rather than manufacturer.
In a press release Strategy Analytics notes that Windows Phones is firmly established as the third ecosystem, but that serious weakness remain:
Microsoft is now firmly established as the smartphone industry’s third major ecosystem, shipping 35.7 million units worldwide to capture 4 percent market share in 2013. However, the Windows Phone platform is still struggling to gain traction in the low-tier and premium-tier smartphone categories and they remain serious weaknesses that Microsoft will need to address in 2014.
One of the most notable year-on-year changes in the data is the decline on the other category, dropping from 64 million to 19.8 million, a consequence of the decline of the Symbian and BlackBerry platforms.
Strategy Analytics also provides data for Q4 2013, which when combined with previous quarterly data, can be used to show the quarterly smartphone shipment trends by platform, as shown in the chart below. The chart also serves as a at a glance view of the respective shipment volumes of each of the main smartphone platforms in the last two year (and given a type device usage cycle of two years is also a rough approximation of active devices).
Windows Phone saw a small dip in unit shipments in Q4 2013, down to 9.4 million from 10.2 million in the previous quarter, but the overall trend remain upwards. Android's dominance of smartphone shipments is evident, with sequential increases for every quarter for the past two years. By contrast, iPhone shipments show a seasonal pattern (highest shipments in Q4 and Q1), reflecting both the typical iPhone model life cycle and the high end nature of Apple's smartphone products.
