iOS is fast becoming a major contender to the global mobile crown in terms of device shipments and mobile OS proliferation.
New data from Gartner published just yesterday indicates that worldwide sales of smartphones to end users had a record fourth quarter of 2014 with an increase of 29.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2013 to reach 367.5 million units.
In the process, Samsung lost the No. 1 spot to Apple in the global smartphone market in the fourth quarter of 2014 — a position Samsung retained since 2011.
In 2014, sales of smartphones to end users totaled 1.2 billion units, up 28.4 percent from 2013 and represented two-thirds of global mobile phone sales.
“With Apple dominating the premium phone market and the Chinese vendors increasingly offering quality hardware at lower prices, it is through a solid ecosystem of apps, content and services unique to Samsung devices that Samsung can secure more loyalty and longer-term differentiation at the high end of the market,” said Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner.