Shipments of Android devices surpassed the 1 billion mark in 2014, leading to the mobile operating system making up 81 per cent of the market.
While Apple shipped just 192.7 million units in the same time period, Android far exceeded it's previous shipments of 0.8 billion in 2013, according toStrategy Analytics. This is in line with a general increase in smartphone sales, which rose 30 per cent between 2013 and 2014.
Android's great year marks the first time that a mobile operating system has exceeding 1 billion shipments, with the company now occupying 81 per cent of the global smartphone market. Meanwhile, Apple's iOS is lagging behind with a 15 per cent (192.7 million) share.
Windows Phone has a mere 3 per cent market share, with 38.8 million smartphone shipments in 2014. Time will tell whether Windows 10 will help to boost this in 2015.
According to the report, this increase in shipments is owed in part to emerging markets in Indonesia and China, and is a trend that's set to continue in 2015 and beyond.
The Android 5.0 Lollipop rollout began late last year, and has been described as Google's biggest update to the mobile operating system. The 5.1 update will launch February, ahead of a wide summer release for all Android devices.
