Android and iOS continue to dominate the smartphone market, with a rising combined market share of 96.3 percent of all smartphones.
That figure is up quite a bit from the 93.8 percent that was reported for 2013, and includes a rise of Android's market share from 78.7 percent in 2013 to 81.5 percent in 2014, and a slight dip for iOS, which went from 15.1 percent in 2013 to 14.8 percent in 2014.
"iOS saw its market share for 2014 decline slightly even as volumes reached a new record and grew at nearly the same pace as the overall smartphone market," said IDC in its report. "Much of this was due to the strong demand for Apple's new and larger iPhones and the reception they had within key markets. What remains to be seen is how Apple will sustain demand going forward, as larger screens were among the last gaps in its product portfolio."
Despite the slight decline in market share for iOS, shipments of devices running iOS were up thanks to a massive iPhone 6 launch. In 2013, Apple shipped 153.4 million iPhone's, rising to a whopping 192.7 million smartphones in 2014.
Devices running Android also saw a massive increase in shipments. While 802 million Android smartphones were shipped in 2013, over 1 billion were shipped in 2014, with Samsung holding its place as the top Android manufacturer; however, it experienced flat growth in 2014.
While iOS lost market share over 2014, it was able to grow during the last quarter of 2014, likely due to the release of the iPhone 6.
Third in the smartphone market share battle was Microsoft's Windows Phone platform, holding 2.7 percent of the market.
Blackberry suffered perhaps the most last year, with a 69.8 percent year-over-year decrease of its smartphone sales. Its market share fell quite a bit, down to 0.4 percent.
While Android's dominance is likely to remain, at least in the near future, there are a number of opportunities for other platforms to start to chip away at that dominance. For example, Apple has now entered the phablet market, which was previously something that was reserved almost uniquely to Android.
"With Microsoft bringing ever-cheaper Lumia into play and Tizen finally getting launched to India early this year, there is still a hunger to chip away at Android's dominance," said senior research manager at IDC Melissa Chau.
2015 will be an interesting year for smartphone sales, with manufacturers having started to turn to emerging markets to continue their growth.
