NEW ANALYSIS: More Than Seven Out Of Ten Smartphones In People's Hands Globally Are Android Devices

For the first time, BI Intelligence has estimated the total global installed base of smartphones, broken out by operating system.

Installed base data refers to devices actually in people's hands at the time, in contrast to many market share numbers that look at how many new smartphones sold in a given quarter ran operating systems like Google's Android or Apple's iOS.

Our analysis shows that out of the world's 1.5 billion currently active smartphones:

• Android has the largest share: 72%, up from 55% during the same period last year. Android is currently on about 80% of smartphones sold globally every quarter, so its share of active smartphones is likely to increase.
• iOS comes in second with an 18% share of installed smartphones, down from 19%.
• The also-rans are way behind. BlackBerry's operating system share shrank to 4%, dropping from 9% a year ago. Windows Phone gained less than a percentage point of share climbing from 2.6% to 2.9% quarter-over-quarter.

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The foundation for our installed base estimate is based on our earlier work on smartphone shipments and adjusted for a two-year average upgrade cycle.

The data shows that despite the popularity of Apple devices in the U.S., Android has all but won the global platform war. A huge factor in Android's dominance is the success of the platform in emerging markets like China and India, where inexpensive devices are favored.

Android, iOS and Windows were the only major operating systems for which the number of active devices increased quarter-over-quarter.