Android and the market
Those who buy a new mobile phone today are highly likely to base their choice between just two operating systems: Android and iOS, but this was not always the case.
Having started out as a multi-platform market, the smartphone landscape has become a duopoly in recent years, after Apple's iOS and Google's Android displaced any other platform, including Microsoft's Windows Phone and the BlackBerry operating system.
According to data from the technology consultancy IDC, Android devices represented just over 86% of the units distributed in 2019, and Apple's iOS almost 14%. In contrast, in 2010, just a decade ago, the combined market share of Android and iOS was less than 40%, with BlackBerry, Windows Phone and other operating systems sharing the rest of the market.
