The days of the 'feature phone' are looking numbered as smartphones continue to gain international traction. According to new figures released by Gartner, over 250 million of the 455.6 mobiles sold in the third quarter of 2013 were smart, with customers in markets such as China and South/Central America continuing to adopt the more high-tech mobiles as the cost of lower-specced smartphones edges ever closer to feature phone prices. Altogether, Gartner expects global mobile sales for 2013 to top 1.8 billion.

Android continues to grow, with 4 out of 5 smartphones sold (over 200 million in Q3 alone) running the OS, although phones often run adapted or reprogrammed versions of the OS in markets such as China. For example, Engadget cites analyst Benedict Evans as estimating only 6% of Chinese Android app installations are managed through Google's official Play Store. Nonetheless, China still remains a huge smartphone market for the likes of Samsung, while Chinese manufacturers such as Huawei and Lenovo continue to grow their respective global market shares, at 4.7% and 5.1% respectively.

In terms of individual manufacturers, Samsung (80 million) and Apple (30 million) still top the smartphone list, with Lenovo, LG and Huawei making up the top 5. Although they're slowly gaining momentum in terms of smartphone sales (moving to number 8), Nokia is second only to Samsung in overall mobile sales, thanks to the continued prevalence of their feature phones. 

Despite the increasingly large lead enjoyed by the Android OS, Gartner's Anshul Gupta believes "the winner of this quarter is Microsoft which grew 123 percent. Microsoft announced the intent to acquire Nokia’s devices and services business, which we believe will unify effort and help drive appeal of Windows ecosystem". Gupta also states "we will see several new tablets enter the market for the holiday season, and we expect consumers in mature markets will favor the purchase of smaller-sized tablets over the replacement of their older smartphones".