Latest Smartphone Numbers Show How Much Consumers Love Android

Apple AAPL still has solid footing in the smartphone market but Google GOOG’s Android operating system is the star of the latest numbers released by Gartner.

In the second quarter, Gartner said that worldwide smartphone sales rose 46.5 percent year over year representing 225 million units shipped. Feature phones, which are sometimes referred to as “dumbphones” declined 21 percent year over year to 210 million units. This was the first time that smartphone sales were higher than feature phones.

Seeming to back up previous data that showed developed markets reaching saturation, it was the Asia Pacific region which saw the highest growth rate of 74.1 percent. Latin America was second at 55.7 percent and Eastern Europe, 31.6 percent.

Looking at worldwide operating system market share, it was Android that looked the most impressive. It commanded 79 percent of worldwide share compared to 64.2 percent one year prior. Apple’s iOS had a 14.2 percent share versus 18.8 percent in 2012.

Microsoft MSFT took the third spot with 3.3 percent share, up from 2.6 percent, and BlackBerry BBRY continued its sharp decline with only a 2.7 percent share versus 5.2 percent in 2012.

Related: BlackBerry Wants A Google-Type Company To Come To The Rescue

Worldwide smartphone sales saw Samsung SSNLF take the top spot with a 31.7 percent share—up two percent from 2012 and Apple with a 14.2 percent share—down 3.6 percent from the previous year.

The data continue to show that the smartphone race is between two companies and one of those companies continues to see a softening. Gartner found that the average selling price of Apple’s phones had fallen to its lowest level since the product’s launch in 2007. This is likely due to strong sales of its iPhone 4 which is already heavily discounted.

Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner, said,

“While Apple’s ASP demonstrates the need for a new flagship model, it is risky for Apple to introduce a new lower-priced model too. Although the possible new lower-priced device may be priced similarly to the iPhone 4 at $300 to $400, the potential for cannibalization will be much greater than what is seen today with the iPhone 4. Despite being seen as the less expensive sibling of the flagship product, it would represent a new device with the hype of the marketing associated with it.” 

Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Tim Parker was long Apple.