Apple and Android big winners in smartphone market for Q1

Android became the most popular smartphone operating system worldwide in the first quarter of 2011, while Apple saw its share of the market grow, according to a report Gartner issued Thursday on sales of mobile phones to end users.

Overall mobile phone sales totaled 427.8 million units in the first quarter of 2011, an increase of 19 percent from the same period in 2010. Smartphone sales added up to 100.8 million, compared to 54.5 million in Q1 last year. They now account for 23.6 percent of mobile phone sales, an increase of 85 percent since the first quarter of 2010, according to Gartner.

Android is leaving other operating systems in the dust, growing its market share in one year from 9.6 percent to 36 percent, Gartner reported. Its lead over Symbian is now almost 10 million as it ran on 36.3 million smartphones sold versus Symbian's 27.6 million. Symbian's market share, on the other hand, has dropped from 44.2 percent to 27.4 percent. Sales of smartphones based on the operating system increased, but couldn't keep up with Android's phenomenal growth.

While Apple was the fourth-place finisher in the quarter's smartphone rankings, it sold 16.9 million units to end users worldwide, more than doubling sales of its iPhones year-on-year, helping the company's market share grow from 2.3 percent to 3.9 percent.