iLounge

According to the latest data released by research company Gartner, Apple gained more worldwide smartphone market share in 2009 than any other company. When breaking smartphone sales down by operating system, Apple placed third with 14.4% of the market, behind only Symbian with 46.9%—down from 52.4% in 2008—and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry, with 19.9% of the market. By comparison, Apple held only 8.2% of the smartphone OS market in 2008, making its 6.2% gain the largest in the category, followed by Android, which went from a 0.5% share in 2008 to 3.9% in 2009, and RIM, which saw a 3.3% gain for its BlackBerry OS. Joining Symbian with market share losses were Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, which went from 11.8% of the market in 2008 to 8.7% in 2009, and non-Android Linux-based OSes, which saw their share decline from 7.6% in 2008 to 4.7% in 2009. Overall, smartphone sales reached 172.4 million units in 2009, a 23.8% increase from 2008.