According to new research from Strategy Analytics, 87.5 percent of smartphones in the world are now running Android. Shipments hit a total of 328.6 million for 3rd quarter of 2016, which is up 10.3 percent up year-on-year. ile Android had always been hanging around the 80 percent mark, this latest number is a new high. Comparatively, Apple shipped 45.5 million iones, which is down 5.2 percent from the 48 million from last year. The real drop is in “others” (like Blackberry ndows phone). st year, 8.2 million units of “other” smartphones were sold in the 3rd quarter. This year, the number is 1.3 million. The growth worldwide is generally driven by low-cost devices, particularly in developing markets. But that may lead to a difficult field for the companies that are competing in this space, according to ody Oh, director of Strategy Analytics: Android’s dominance may not slow, but competing in the league may still be a challenge for hardware makers who have to fight for profits at such thin margins. y this matters: Android is big, which has both been a boon for services a challenge for how to manage fragmentation. The xel line frees to focus on building the optimal Android experience with its own devices at the high end, while still serving up the Android Open Source oject to hardware partners.
