All this talk about how insanely successful Apple was last year has taken a lot of attention from the fact that 2014 was undoubtedly the year of Android. With a 30% increase in smartphones that shipped with Google’s mobile operating system, there were more than one billion Android devices shipped last year, taking 81% of the smartphone market.Â
Apple may be selling more iPhones than ever before, but 2014 was a record-breaking year for Android too: New analyst figures show that one billion smartphones running Google’s mobile OS were shipped over the 12 month period. That’s a rise of 30 percent over the previous year and means that 81 percent of the mobile phones shifted in 2014 were running Android. If you’re wondering why both iOS and Android can be doing so well simultaneously, it’s worth remembering that profits and market share are not the same metric — more devices run Android but Apple is raking in more of the cash. A number of different manufacturers produce Android phones of course, none of whom are doing particularly well at making money from it.