A decade ago, in the heyday of Symbian and BlackBerry, if you’d said two unannounced smartphone operating systems would be hoovering up 96.3% of the market by 2015, many mobile industry folk would have laughed. And yet here we are living in an Android and iOS world.
Although in truth, it’s mainly an Android world: Google’s OS accounted for 81.5% of smartphone shipments in 2014 according to research firm IDC, with Apple some way back in second place on 14.8%. That’s 1.1bn and 192.7m Android and iOS smartphones shipped last year respectively, with Windows Phone taking a mere 2.7% share with 34.9m shipments. These figures, incidentally, are one reason why post-Microsoft life for personal radio service MixRadio holds so much potential. The overall smartphones market grew by 27.7% year-on-year to 1.3bn shipments, according to IDC.
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…