New survey shows Android finished 2011 with 48.8% of the global smartphone market

A new survey showed that Android increased its share of the global smartphone market by 244% from last year, to finish with a commanding 48.8% share. 237.8 million handsets with the OS were shipped in 2011. Android also was the leader in the fourth quarter of 2011 with 81.9 million units shipped, good enough for a 51.6% marketshare. Apple's iOS was second for the quarter and for the year with 23.5% and 19.1% of the market respectively. Apple shipped 37 million units of the Apple iPhone in Q4 and 93.1 million for the year. The latter figure represents a strong 96% increase from the prior year's figure.

While many have counted RIM out, for the year the Canadian based manufacturer increased its shipments by 5% to 51.4 million units. That works out to a 10.4% slice of the global smartphone pie. But things did deteriorate in the fourth quarter for RIM with its shipments for the three month period declining by 9.7% to 13.2 million. That accounted for 8.3% of the market.

The biggest loser for the last quarter of the year was Symbian, whose shipments dropped 40.9% to 18.3 million phones, good for an 11.6% share. For the year, the OS accounted for 80.1 million smartphones and a 16.4% marketshare. That was off 29.1% from 2010.

The biggest loser for the year was Windows Phone which lost 43.3% of 2010's slice of the market to reach just 1.4% of smartphones shipped in 2011. The 6.8 million handsets shipped with Microsoft's mobile OS installed was even well behind the 13.2 million units that were equipped with Samsung's bada OS.

For the quarter, smartphone shipments rose 56.6% to 158.5 million units. For the year, 487.7 million smartphones were shipped globally, a rise of  62.7% for the year.

source: Canalys via WMPoweruser