Smartphones are winning the battle of the handsets and they now account for two thirds of all new mobile phones worldwide.<br /><br /> The latest research from technology tracking company Garter – covering the July to September period – predicts the number of phones sold this year will hit 1.2 billion. <br /><br /> A total of 301 million smartphones were sold in Q3, 20 percent more than a year ago. <br /><br /> Apple and Samsung’s combined smartphone share totalled 37 percent, a 7.0 percent fall from Q3 in 2013. <br /><br /> In the third quarter of 2014 sales of so-called feature phone were down by 25 percent from the same period last year.<br /><br /> Android appears to have come out ahead in the so-called platform war for operating systems. <br /><br /> Samsung and Apple, which used to very much dominate the market, are losing market share, particularly to Chinese phone makers, as sales increase in emerging markets.<br /><br /> That is because demand is sliding in saturated mature markets like Europe and the US. <br /><br /> By 2018 Gartner predicts that 90 percent of the new handsets sold will be smartphones.
