Windows Phone overtakes BlackBerry to claim third place in 2013 smartphone shipments

Market research firm IDC just released its latest quarterly look at the smartphone market, and for the first time Windows Phone marketshare has eclipsed BlackBerry. During Q1 2013, Windows Phone devices accounted for 3.2 percent of all smartphones shipped, while BlackBerry devices made up 2.9 percent of the market. That's a change from last quarter, when Windows Phone made up 2.6 percent of all shipments, compared to 3.2 percent for BlackBerry. While that's good news for Microsoft in a relative sense — they've been trailing BlackBerry for third place for quite some time — it's pretty obvious that we still don't have a true third smartphone ecosystem that consumers are responding to yet.

It's still a two-horse race between Apple and Google, with Android and iOS making up a whopping 92.3 percent of the market. Android continues to be the dominant global player with 75 percent of all smartphones shipped in Q1. This comes just one day after Google announced 900 million Android device activations, up from the 500 million Google announced last fall. Despite having its best first quarter ever with 37.4 million iPhones shipped, iOS marketshare dropped to 17.3 percent thanks to a huge year-over-year increase in Android shipments: IDC estimated 162.1 million Android phones shipped in Q1, up from 90.3 million one year ago. If BlackBerry or Microsoft hope to get their marketshares beyond the single-digit range, they're going to need to find a way to chip away at Google's huge lead in the smartphone arena.
 
Source: Theverge