As we’ve mentioned before, Samsung is a force to be feared in the smartphone industry. The latest numbers from Gartner show that Samsung absolutely mowed down the competition in the first quarter of 2013 by selling 64.7 million smartphones, good for a 30.8% share of the global smartphone market and a 59% increase from the 40.6 million smartphones it sold in the first quarter of 2012. These numbers are particularly impressive because they came before Samsung launched its new flagship Galaxy S4 smartphone, so it’s likely that the company will further expand its lead over its rivals in the second quarter.
Gartner found that Samsung chief rival Apple came in second place with 38.8 million smartphones sold, good for an 18.2% market share, while LG came in a distant third with 10 million smartphones sold, or 4.8% of the global smartphone market.
Samsung’s blow-out first quarter also meant a blow-out first quarter for Android, since Gartner found that the operating system’s market share on the quarter ballooned to 74.4% of all smartphones sold, versus market shares of 18.2% for iOS, 3% for BlackBerry and 2.9% for Windows Phone. The fact that Windows Phone still trails BlackBerry in market share has to be frustrating for Microsoft, especially since BlackBerry’s smartphone sales market share has only continued to collapse over the past year.
Despite the high-profile launch of Windows Phone 8 in the fall of 2012, Microsoft only recorded a market share increase of one percentage point from where it stood in Q1 2012, when it had a market share of 1.9%.
