Android is half of all smartphone sales: Gartner

New York: The market share for smartphones running Google Inc.'s Android software doubled in the third quarter as more devices became available and Apple delayed release of a new iPhone, according to the research firm Gartner.

Android had more than half of the worldwide smartphone market in the third quarter, up from 25 per cent a year ago. Nokia's Symbian system had 17 per cent, down from 36 per cent, and Research In Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry devices dropped to 11 per cent, compared with 15 per cent a year ago.

Apple's iOS system, which runs the iPhone, also dropped - to 15 per cent, compared with 17 per cent a year ago. Apple typically releases new models over the summer, but the new iPhone didn't come out until after the third quarter ended.

Sales of the iPhone were expected to pick up in the holiday quarter with the October 14 release of the iPhone 4S. Apple Inc. said it sold more than 4 million units of the new model in the first three days - meaning it was selling more than twice as fast as the previous model did when it launched last year.

Gartner said smartphone sales worldwide increased 42 per cent to 115 million in the third quarter. More than 60 million of those phones were Android devices such as HTC Corp.'s ThunderBolt and Samsung Electronics Co.'s Conquer 4G.

"Android benefited from more mass-market offerings, a weaker competitive environment and the lack of exciting new products on alternative operating systems such as Windows Phone 7 and RIM," said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner.

As some analysts have already estimated, Samsung became the No. 1 smartphone maker worldwide, largely because of its Galaxy devices running on Android. Gartner said Samsung sold 24 million smartphones in the quarter, compared with 17 million iPhones.

Despite a drop in market share, Nokia continued to be the worldwide leader in mobile device sales as it accounted for 23.9 per cent of global sales. Dual-SIM phones in particular, and feature phones generally, maintained Nokia's momentum in emerging markets.