Android celebrates its fourth birthday with 75% of the world’s smartphone market

Android celebrated its fourth birthday since the launch of the T-Mobile G1 last month, but it seems as though the company may be receiving a belated gift in commemoration. A new market research report suggests that Google’s Android OS currently holds 75 percent of the entire world’s smartphone market, up from 57.5 percent the previous year.

This number is astronomical in relation to the relatively short period of time the OS has been around. Of course a large percentage of this figure can be attributed to budget phones running outdated versions of the OS, but in reality isn’t that an integral part of the Android platform? IDC, the company behind the Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, notes that these numbers are preliminary, but are expected to be irritably close to the actual number.

“The share decline of smartphone operating systems not named iOS since Android’s introduction isn’t a coincidence,” said IDC’s senior research analyst Kevin Restivo. “The smartphone operating system isn’t an isolated product, it’s a crucial part of a larger technology ecosystem. Google has a thriving, multi-faceted product portfolio. Many of its competitors, with weaker tie-ins to the mobile OS, do not. This factor and others have led to loss of share for competitors with few exceptions.”

Source: BusinessWire