Research firm IDC has published its latest estimates for global smartphone shipments, this time from the second quarter of 2014. It says that handset makers shipped 301.3m smartphones during the quarter, up 25.3% year-on-year. As ever, note that “shipments” doesn’t necessarily mean “sales” – it’s always unclear how many of these devices are still sitting on shelves or in warehouses of retailers and mobile operators. Still, the trends are useful: between them, Android and iPhone accounted for 96.4% of smartphone shipments in Q2. Although with Android accounting for 84.7% on its own, it’s fair to say that Google’s operating system continues to dominate the market. “It’s been an incredible upward slog for other OS players – Windows Phone has been around since 2010 but has yet to break the 5% share mark, while the backing of the world’s largest smartphone player, Samsung, has not boosted Tizen into the spotlight,” said IDC’s Melissa Chau. Windows Phone had a 2.5% market share last quarter, while BlackBerry had just 0.5%.
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