Android Market Share Jumps to 72 Percent [REPORT]

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Android's growth is even more impressive when you take into account the overall increase of smartphone sales in Q3 2012, which was 47%. Worldwide sales of all mobile phones declined 3% in that same period.

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On the manufacturer front, Samsung is leading the way, jumping from 18.7% in Q3 2011 to 22.9% in mobile device sales in Q3 2012. It's followed by Nokia, which fell from 23.9% to 19.2% and Apple, which is a distant third, having grown from 3.9% to 5.5%.

Thanks to better-than-expected Asha sales, Nokia is doing better overall than Gartner's estimates, but its smartphone sales paint a grim picture. Selling only 7.2 million smartphones in Q3 2012, the Finnish company fell to no. 7 worldwide position. Big winners are once again Apple, which sold 23.6 million units in Q3 2012, up 36.2% year-on-year, and Samsung, which sold a whopping 55 million smartphones, commanding 32.5% of the global smartphone market in that same period.