By David Nagel, Campus Technology
Smart phones running on Google’s Android OS will approach 1 billion units by the end of this year, according to a new forecast from market research firm Gartner. In 2013, Android phones accounted for 78.4 percent of all smart phone sales to end users worldwide, or 758.7 million units. In 2013, total worldwide smart phone sales were 967.8 million, by Gartner’s reckoning. (Note that we have reported different smart phone statistics in the last couple weeks. Gartner and International Data Corp. both provide worldwide statistics on technology shipments and sales, but the two often differ on their final numbers. IDC had total 2013 shipments at slightly more than 1 billion, with Android phones accounting for 793.6 million units. IDC reported “unit shipments,” while Gartner reported “sales to end users.” Not all devices that are shipped by manufacturers wind up being sold to end users, which may account for some of the variance in the figures reported by the two firms.)
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