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[ZhugeEX]

Some other data that people may be interested in.

As I said in the OP there were approximately 1,060m Android smartphones shipped in 2014. This gives Android a total of ~82% market share.

Apple shipped a total of 192.7m iOS smartphones giving them them around ~15% market share. All the Apple devices are shipped with iOS pre installed with access to the App store and all Apple apps.

Android on the other hand is more open and therefore a number of smartphones (especially in China/India) don't ship with Certified Android but instead shipped with Non Certified Android also known as Forked Android or AOSP. Often with forked Android the software developer will ship the software without any of Google's apps or App store and this is worrying for Google as they are missing out on revenue with these devices.

Now, more than 1/4 of all Android smartphones ship with a Non Certified version of Android. The estimated break down is ~785m Certified and ~275m non certified.

Xiaomi, the fifth largest manufacturer, as an example do not ship their devices with Google's play store but with Xiaomi's own app store. And with the ever growing number of AOSP devices being shipped (Up 90% compared to 2013) it'll be an issue for Google.

Google are answering with the Android One project which installs certified google on sub $100 devices for developing markets. But AOSP/Forked android will always be a threat and unfortunately is one of the issues with an open source OS.

 

[Pankratous]

Sony makes great handsets but suck at selling them. They should push to be on every carrier and put lots of marketing dollars behind their devices. They make some of the finest phones but you'd never know it due to carrier exclusives and a complete lack of marketing. Meanwhile Samsung makes plasticky phones with tons of bloatwear, they put it on every carrier on the planet and market it to death. There's a reason why they're (unfortunately) synonymous with Android phones in the general public's mind.

Yeah, they have a real marketing issue, especially in the US. Also, the way they pick and choose "carriers" as you guys call them is just... entirely detrimental to their sales.

Completely disagree.

Extremely uninteresting design (hey let's make a rectangular phone and then just stop), their OS design is very behind the times and they don't have anything that sets them apart from other phones except being waterproof.

They've only got themselves to blame.

That "uninteresting design" for me is by far the best looking of any phone available. Minimalist designs are by far superior to anything else. Samsung phones look like those tablets you give kids at age three for education. HTC are the only other company with great designs.

As for Sony's OS, I like it. It's as close to stock Android as you can get without actually being stock Android, and doesn't come full of bloaty rubbish.

 

[ZhugeEX]

Gfk just announced that approximately 1,228m Smartphones were sold through to end users in 2014 with China being the biggest market with around ~32% of 392.8m sold through.

In comparison approximately 1,301m Smartphones were sold in worldwide in 2014 with China accounting for over 420 million or again, ~32%. Smartphone sales in China are due to slow considerably next year due to almost reaching saturation point.

 

[SURGEdude]

Gfk just announced that approximately 1,228m Smartphones were sold through to end users in 2014 with China being the biggest market with around ~32% of 392.8m sold through.

In comparison approximately 1,301m Smartphones were sold in worldwide in 2014 with China accounting for over 420 million or again, ~32%. Smartphone sales in China are due to slow considerably next year due to almost reaching saturation point.

Thanks for all the data. Somehow I missed this thread thread the first time out.