Gartner Says: Android Is 2nd in Mobile Sales

According to a new mobile phone report released Wednesday by Gartner, the technology research company, sales of smartphones and mobile devices continued to surge in the third quarter.

Gartner said in the report that a staggering 417 million mobile phones were sold worldwide during this past quarter, up 35 percent from the same period last year. The report also notes that the sale of smartphones, which include phones on the Android platform from Google, the BlackBerry from Research In Motion, and the iPhone from Apple, grew 96 percent from last year.

Android took top honors in the report. Android-based phones “accounted for 25.5 percent of worldwide smartphone sales, making it the No. 2 operating system” in the world, right behind Symbian, Nokia’s operating system.

The growth of Android is especially startling considering that it was released only two years ago.

In terms of hardware, Nokia, Samsung and LG remained the top three device manufacturers in the mobile phone market, but Apple crept into fourth place, selling 13.5 million iPhones and beating out R.I.M., which sold nearly 12 million BlackBerrys.

Gartner said Apple’s record sales numbers could have been higher if the company didn’t have supply constraints. It is expected that sales of the iPhone in the United States will grow in the first quarter of 2011 if the iPhone becomes available on the Verizon network, as reports suggest.

Nokia still beat out most of its competitors, selling 110 million phones, even though it has had trouble getting certain mobile phone components, including cameras and displays.

Gartner predicts that cellphone sales will continue to grow at 30 percent year over year.

What do you think people, Is Android the most powerful smartphone OS out there, can they take the no.1 position from Apple's iphone and their ios4 OS??