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204.4m Android smartphones shipped in the third quarter of 2013, giving Google's platform an 81.3% market share, according to research firm Strategy Analytics.
Android's growth came at the expense of Apple and BlackBerry. The former saw iPhone shipments rise from 26.9m in Q3 2012 to 33.8m in Q3 2013, but its market share dropped from 15.6% to 13.4% in that time.
BlackBerry, meanwhile, looks out for the count: 2.5m smartphones shipped in the third quarter left it with a market share of just 1% according to Strategy Analytics – down from 4.3% this time last year.
Microsoft's Windows Phone? It's on the rise, albeit from a small base. The number of Windows Phone shipments nearly tripled from 3.7m units to 10.2m units in the third quarter, giving it a 4.1% market share globally.
The caveat, as ever, is that these figures cover shipments: sales to retailers and operators, but not necessarily to people. Even so, Android's growth (from an already-dominant market share of 75% in the third quarter of 2012) is undisputed.
"Android’s gain came mainly at the expense of BlackBerry, which saw its global smartphone share dip from 4 percent to 1 percent in the past year due to a weak line-up of BB10 devices," said Strategy Analytics' senior analyst Scott Bicheno. "Apple also lost some ground to Android because of its limited presence at the lower end of the smartphone market."
Bicheno also noted that Apple is likely to haul back some of its lost market share in the final three months of 2013, with its iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c smartphones only having gone on sale on 20 September.
Android is also putting Apple under pressure in the tablet market, with research firm IDC claiming earlier today that iPad's share of that market fell below 30% for the first time in the third quarter, as Samsung's grew to 20.4%.
Microsoft may be happy with having established Windows Phone as the third horse in the smartphone race, albeit with a lot of help from its friend.
"Microsoft grew its smartphone shipments by 178 percent annually in Q3 2013 and it is currently the world’s fastest growing major smartphone platform," said Bicheno's colleague Neil Mawston, noting that the growth was "almost entirely" due to Nokia's range of Lumia smartphones.
Nokia's latest financial results revealed that it had shipped 8.8m Lumia handsets in the third quarter of the year. Overall, Strategy Analytics said that global smartphone shipments grew 45% year-on-year to 251.4m units in the third quarter.
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