Asymco‘s Horace Dediu has published a series of charts that show as clear a picture as you are likely to see of the state of the global mobile phone market today. The one shown here — of smartphone shipments in Q3 2011– comes with several caveats.
- The dip in Apple’s (AAPL) iOS shipments reflects the fact that the transition from the iPhone 4 to the 4S was telegraphed to consumers through the press, suppressing sales in the quarter.
- The extraordinary growth in Google (GOOG) Android (and Android-like) phones is tempered by Dediu’s estimate that as many as 10 million of the nearly 70 million shipped in the quarter may be sitting unsold in warehouses.
- The chart does not show the 69% of mobile phones shipped in the quarter that were not smartphones. For that, and Dediu’s analysis, click here.
