Kantar World Panel has released its latest stats on smartphone sales in the fourth quarter. Naturally, Google's (GOOGL 0.55%) Android platform is still dominating the market. And perhaps even less surprisingly, the report gives even more confirmation that BlackBerry (BB -0.69%) is officially deceased. BBRY's highest percentage market share of any market is in Great Britain, with 3% market share, and the company holds less than half a percent in both the U.S. and China. Microsoft's (MSFT 0.37%) Windows Phone may be picking up much of the market share that BlackBerry is losing, and while it won't be coming near the two top dogs -- Google or Apple (AAPL 1.27%) -- anytime soon, it may be positioning itself to hold a solid third place.
Apple's market share did slip in many markets, but it held strong in the U.S., China and Japan. Kantar also notes that Samsung is facing pressures across all major markets now, with profit growth slowing as the company is pinched both from the high end with Apple and its new smartphones, and from increasingly manic competition on the low end of the smartphone spectrum. In this video from Monday's Tech Teardown, Motley Fool tech and telecom bureau chief Evan Niu discusses the latest numbers in the cutthroat smartphone war.
