Mobile Wars: ‘Droid Crush Apple iOS

Apple crush: every three out of four phone are now Androids, say analysts.

Yes folks, Google’s green man OS has grown almost 100% (91%) in 12 months, analysts IDC said this week, as its grip on the world phone market gets even tighter.

In Q3, Android based smartphones, which includes HTC, Samsung and Motorola, accounted for 75% of all shipments globally, compared to rival Apple’s 15%.

Not bad for the Google OS which is celebrating its fourth birthday, and has “outpaced the market and taken share from the competition” including  former king iOS, who kicked off the smartphone revolution back in 2007.

And although Apple iOS market share grew market 57% y-o-y, it success comes no where near ‘Droid’s, which is enjoying double the average growth of its rivals.

The late launch of the iPhone 5 and slashing prices on older models prevented Apple’s shipment volumes from slipping in the third quarter, say analysts, but there was a notable lack of ‘wow’ on “5” software, which runs on iOS 6.

“Without a splashy new OS-driven feature like Siri in 2011 and FaceTime in 2010, the iPhone 5 relied on its larger, but not wider, screen and LTE connectivity to drive growth,” IDC said in its analysis.

BlackBerry and Nokia Symbian OS also took a major hit from the Google invasion – slumping one third and 77% respectively compared to Q3 2011.

“Android has been one of the primary growth engines of the smartphone market since it was launched in 2008,” said Ramon Llamas, IDC research manager, Mobile Phones.

Android’s plurality of vendors, wide network availability and consumers who have “embraced” Android, are key ingredients to its success, says Llamas. There are also several Chinese phones brands including ZTE which have adopted the Google OS.

“Even today, more vendors are introducing their first Android-powered smartphones to market.”

But there was one other mover this quarter – Microsoft Windows phone which rose 140% compared to a year ago although still account for just 2% of the mobile market.

Windows Phone has yet to make a significant dent in Android’s and iOS’s share, say IDC, but this could change in 4Q, when a slew of Windows Phone 8 smartphones hit town from Nokia, HTC and Samsung.

W8 was released in Oz last week.

Read: Microsoft Plan Android Killer?