IDC is the latest research firm to publish its numbers for smartphone shipments for the third quarter of 2013, and they tell a familiar story. The company claims that 261.1m smartphones shipped in Q3, with Google’s Android accounting for 81% of them, streets ahead of second-placed iPhone’s 12.9% share. Microsoft’s Windows Phone also showed strong growth from a small base, with a market share of 3.6%, pulling away from BlackBerry’s 1.7% – by contrast their respective shares were 2% and 4.1% in the third quarter of 2012. IDC puts Android and Windows Phone’s growth down to pricing: “Both platforms have a selection of devices available at prices low enough to be affordable to the mass market, and it is the mass market that is driving the entire market forward,” said analyst Ramon Llamas. Another stat: 21% of smartphone shipments in Q3 were ‘phablets’ – larger-screened devices – up from 3% a year ago.
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Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…