Research firm Gartner said Thursday that smartphone sales are up some 50 percent year-over-year, with Android showing explosive growth and topping Apple in the quarter ending June 30 for the first time in the history of the company’s survey. Gartner is only the latest in a line of outfits to confirm Android’s stratospheric rise.

Growth year-over-year is a stunning 850 percent. Last year at this time, Android accounted for only 1.8 percent of the market. This year? 17.2 percent. That was enough to put it in third place overall. Symbian led all with a 41.2 percent share, followed by RIM with 18.2 percent. Both were down from a year ago.

iOS slipped into fourth place with a 14.2 percent share, however it was up just over a percentage point from the year previous. Gartner cautioned that its numbers could have been stunted by consumers holding purchases off for the iPhone 4, and limited availability once it was released.

“We expect that a wider global roll-out of iPhone 4 will sustain Apple’s sales momentum throughout the second half of 2010,” the company wrote in its report.

Obviously, it’s Android’s non exclusive strategy that is really paying off for Google here. But lets wait another quarter until we see the first indications of iPhone 4’s effect on sales before we pass judgement. Add to this simply releasing the iPhone on Verizon as rumored could put iPhone back on top very quick, and it just seems too early to tell…

 
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