Google's Android platform now represents 17.2 percent of the global smartphone market, overtaking Apple's OS as the world's third most popular smartphone OS and edging past Research In Motion's BlackBerry to emerge as the top-selling OS in the U.S., according to new data published by research firm Gartner.
Worldwide sales of Android-powered devices topped 10.6M in the second quarter of 2010, up from just 756,000 a year ago, at which time Android made up only 1.8 percent of the global smartphone market.
"A non-exclusive strategy that produces products selling across many communication service providers, and the backing of so many device manufacturers, which are bringing more attractive devices to market at several different price points, were among the factors that yielded its growth this quarter," said Gartner research vice president Carolina Milanesi in a prepared statement.
Read more
