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A Canalys wrap-up of 2011 smartphone share painted an overall picture that kept Apple and Google in front, but also provided clearer pictures of Windows Phone. Android was just short of an absolute majority at 48.8 percent, while the iPhone held 19.1 percent. Nokia's Symbian and RIM's BlackBerry still held on to the double digits at 16.4 percent and 10.5 percent each.
Canalys late Wednesday provided one of the few estimates of Windows Phone 7 shipments for early 2011. The analyst team believed that Microsoft's combined partners shipped under 2.5 million phones between January and March. Each of the top five Android phone makers sold more than this number by themselves, and Samsung's in-house Bada OS also saw more shipments at 3.5 million.
Apple still held on to a commanding lead in tablets in the winter, Canalys said Thursday. Escalating competition from the Samsung Galaxy Tab didn't stop the iPad and iPad 2 from getting a combined 74 percent share, making up 4.69 million of the 6.4 million tablets that shipped between January and March. The slates would have claimed more but had been hit both by the post-holiday lull and the shortages surrounding the iPad 2, according to the researchers.
Android has overtaken BlackBerry and iPhone sales to hold the largest share of the smartphone market in the US, Canalys argued today. Collectively, the sales from HTC, Motorola and smaller Android producers amounted to 34 percent of American smartphones in the spring, or just enough to edge out RIM's 32.1 percent and Apple's 21.7 percent. HTC's Droid Incredible, Evo 4G and other devices accounted for the largest slice at 14.4 percent, with Motorola, LG and others taking smaller pieces.
Apple is effectively already in the top five computer builders worldwide through the iPad, analysts argued today. Making the contentious claim that the tablet is equivalent to a netbook, Canalys said Apple's 3.27 million iPads were enough to give it six percent of the portable computer market by itself. Adding Macs would put Apple in the same company as ASUS, Lenovo and Toshiba for market share.
