Android dominates, as Windows phone sales dip to less than one percent worldwide

Although Apple and Android are often pitted against each other in arguments between friends, and between talking heads, there really is no competition when it comes to raw sales numbers. Android dominates the smartphone marketplace, with a whopping 86.2 percent of the total sales over the last quarter, according to the latest Gartner statistics.

Of course with such monstrous Android figures in the latest report, Apple still ranks highly in terms of individual manufacturers. In fact, it sits just behind Samsung in that respect, with a near 13 percent of the market. That represents a drop of just over 1.5 percent year on year, but it's still a sizeable chunk.

Samsung however is the king of the hill, with a near quarter share of all smartphones, up from 21.8 percent to 22.3 percent this year. It and Apple represent the only two non-Chinese smartphone manufacturers in the top five. The other three are Huawei, Oppo and Xiaomi.

Related: 5 awesome web browsers for Android

To give this some context, together those five make up more than half of all smartphones sold over the past three months. all the other manufacturers tally up to just 46 percent of the total.

So what's driving such growth for Chinese firms and the decline in Apple's fortunes? As always, part of it is the global marketplace expanding into new territories. While Western markets might more easily afford iPhones, it's harder to justify the price of an iPhone in developing nations. Conversely, lower cost Chinese manufacturers have cleaned up by improving their feature offerings — Oppo, to offer one example, has drawn praise for its anti-shake camera, optimized for selfies.

Source: Android dominates, as Windows phone sales dip to less than one percent worldwide