Android market share surges to commanding 90% of China's smartphone market

Once upon a time, Symbian ruled supreme in China. Then, Nokia adopted Windows Phone, and Symbian fell off a cliff. And if there is one story of complete market capitalization that is of Android eating up Symbian’s share in China.

Google’s platform now has increased its market share to more than the mind boggling 90% in the world’s most populous country, according to the latest report by Analysis International. The share is likely even higher, but the analysts don’t count knock-off Android devices.

Just last year Android’s share of the Chinese market was 58.2%, so that is some very, very impressive growth.

While Symbian was the biggest loser in China, the iPhone has also lost market share and now has a tiny 4.2% of the market, down from 6% last year.

And just how much did Symbian lose? Catastrophic does not describe it well enough - it slumped to 2.4% in Q3 2012 down from 31.5% in Q2 2011.

Still Android’s rise in China does not necessarily translate into huge gains for Google. China is actually blocking many of the company’s services.