Canalys: Over 300m smart devices shipped in Q1 2013, 59.5% powered by Android, 19.3% iOS and OS X, 18.1% Windows

In Q1 2013, 308.7 million smart mobile devices shipped worldwide, representing a year-on-year growth of 37.4 percent. Breaking down those numbers by operating system, Google’s Android dominated with 59.5 percent share, followed by Apple’s iOS and OS X at 19.3 percent share, and Microsoft’s Windows and Windows Phone at 18.1 percent share.

The latest estimates come from Canalys, an independent analyst firm which says it stakes its reputation “on the quality of our data, our innovative use of technology, and our high level of customer service.” Keeping that in mind, it’s worth elaborating how the company defines a “smart mobile device”: notebooks, tablets, and smartphones.

Out of the three, the tablet market unsurprisingly continues to grow the fastest: worldwide, tablet shipments grew 106.1 percent year-on-year to 41.9 million units. Smartphone shipments came in at just over 216.3 million for the quarter, maintaining a strong 47.9 percent growth. Notebook PC shipments totaled 50.5 million units, once again contracting during the quarter, this time by 13.1 percent year-over-year.

Now that you know desktops are excluded (and hence why Microsoft is third as opposed to second) as are feature phones, here are the figures for this past quarter:

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As you can see, Samsung took first place by a wide margin with 26.6 percent share of total smart mobile device shipments and Apple was close in second with 19.3 percent share. Rounding out the top five were Lenovo (5.0 percent), Sony (3.2 percent), and Huawei (3.1 percent).

Canalys also broke out some interesting points for all three types of devices:

• Apple continued its lead in the tablet space with a 46.4 percent share, but it lost share to its Android-based rivals for the third consecutive quarter.
• Android handsets accounted for 75.6 percent of total smartphone shipments, and Samsung dominated once again, growing its volume by 64.3 percent year-on-year, which helped its market share exceed 32 percent. Apple saw a modest 6.7 percent annual growth in its smartphone shipments (37 million), the lowest level since the launch of the original iPhone back in 2007. Huawei, LG, and ZTE rounded out the top five smartphone vendors, all with less than 5 percent market share each.
• The biggest decline for notebooks was in Western Europe, where shipments fell by 25.2 percent on an annual basis.

So far, 2013 is shaping up to be a very interesting year, especially for Google, Apple, Samsung, and Microsoft.

Top Image credit: Toshifumi Kitamura/Getty Images