Windows Phone is now third in the smartphone wars!

   The IDC have done it again and this month they're back with an update to the distribution of the mobile OS' and they have revealed that the for the first time ever Windows Phone is officially the world's third placed operating system!

   This months stats show that Windows Phone is slowly starting to garner more attention, while Blackberry's current lack of phones is starting to impact their overall market share. Obviously, the battle for third place seems somewhat insignificant because both Blackberry and Windows Phone are miles behind the runaway success stories of Android and iOS!  

   As you can see from the tablet above Android is the runaway leader in terms of market share, with huge quantities of devices being sold, indeed Google announced that there are at least 900 million devices which have been activated running their operating system just yesterday! In second place is Apple with their quantities of sales steadying a little and seeing 6% year over year growth in the volumes of phones they ship. Having 17% of the market is still a remarkable achievement considering that they only sell three phones at any given point in time!

   Then comes Windows Phone which saw year over year growth in sales of 133%, which means they only shipped 7 million phones in the last quarter, but some growth is good growth! Then there's Blackberry devices, Linux devices, Symbian devices and the fateful 'other' categories which round out the stats.

   Do you expect Blackberry to head back above Windows Phone when cheap BB10 device start arriving? Can Windows Phone gain on Android and iOS? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Via PocketLint.

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YouGov reveal how 'quality Android tablets' affect Apple's market share.

   The tablet market is still very young, the first generation iPad was released three years ago and since then the tablet market has exploded. People have tried 3D tablets, they've tried 10 inch tablets, Microsoft has thrown in their 11.6" Surface tablets and Asus even made a 18.4" desktop tablet which dual-boots Android and Windows 8! 

   So there's been a heck of a lot of experimentation, but one form factor which has hit the sweet spot has been the 7-8" arena and the other area which manufacturers have had success is by offering well built devices.

   YouGov have today reported that consumers now perceive Android devices as 'equal in quality' to the iPad and that these devices are starting to cut into the 'premium' tablet niche which Apple carved out themselves.

   The guys acknowledge that Apple is still the main player in the arena, but that also noted that the company saw their share of the market cut by 10% from Q1 2012 to the same time this year. That doesn't mean that sales of iPads went down, in fact it was the opposite, but other companies started selling more devices too and that ate into Apple's market share.

   According to the YouGov report Samsung has grown their market share by 150% in the past year, coming up from 4% to 10% of the market. Similarly the Nexus 7 has had the, 'most impressive' launch picking up an impressive 8% of the market in 10 months! Amazon's 7" slate the Kindle Fire is now also 5% of sales here in the UK too, so that's seen very impressive growth too! The graph below gives you a better idea of how things have changed!

   The one thing which YouGov highlights as being good news for Apple is how resilient the iPad mini has been to these new tablets. At the moment that device accounts for 4% of the market and it consistently scores higher in the overall satisfaction polls than its Android rivals in eight of nine quality attributes which YouGov uses.

   On a different note the research from the company now shows that nearly one in every five people own a tablet (18%) and that's up 5% since just after Christmas last year!

   All of this has lead the company's Consulting Director of Technology & Telecoms, John Gilbert to say that:

 “With a growing market, greater competition and falling prices, Apple was bound to lose some share.  However, it is not simply a matter of inexpensive products flooding the market.  It seems that Apple no longer has a monopoly on the “premium” share as other brands emerge with near-equal satisfaction scores. Given the market’s current expectations and considerations in purchasing tablets, we anticipate Apple to lose additional share throughout the coming year to Samsung, Google and Amazon.”

   What we want to know is what devices you've got? Have you got a tablet or do you want one? Are you one of those people who bought an iPad or did you pick up one of these new 'quality' Android devices? Let us know in the comments below!
YouGov via PCPro.

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