A new quarterly report from ABI Research show that shipments of ‘forked’ Android smartphones - those that use the Android Open Source Project rather than Google’s own version of Android - accounted for 20% of the smartphone market in Q2 2014.
Shipments of AOSP smartphones increased by 20% from the previous quarter, while the total market grew by just 3%.
Overall, Google-based ‘Open Handset Alliance’ phones lead the market with a 65% share - up 13% from Q1 2014 - with 278 million AOSP and OHA devices shipped in total.
Nick Spencer, senior practice director for mobile devices at ABI Research, said “AOSP’s growth is driven by the development of Chinese and Indian handset manufacturers, not only in their domestic markets, but increasingly throughout Asia and beyond. Chinese and Indian vendors accounted for the majority of smartphone shipments for the first time with 51% share. While many of these manufacturers are low cost, some are making inroads in the mid-tier, including Xiaomi and Gionee, hence the growing challenge to Samsung in particular.”