'Three out of four smartphones worldwide now running on Android systems'

London - Almost three out of four of smartphones around the world are now running the Android mobile operating system, a new report has said.

According to IT market research firm Gartner, Google's mobile OS now has a 72.4 per cent share of the market for mobile operating systems, a massive increase from the 52.5 per cent it held a year ago.

Samsung's wildly popular smartphones accounted for a big portion of that gain, with the South Korean tech giant shipping 55million units, the majority of which run on Android, the Daily Mail reports.

According to the survey, Apple, whose devices run on its own proprietary iOS software, sold around 23.5million phones over the same period, the third quarter of 2012.

That was up from 17.3million a year ago, but the rise was not enough to stop the market share of the Silicon Valley company's operating system slipping from 15 per cent to 13.9 per cent, the paper said.

According to the paper, the survey said the fall in Apple's market share could have been a result of users around the world waiting for the release of the iPhone 5 in their countries.

"With the launch of iPhone 5, Gartner analysts expect iOS share will grow strongly in the fourth quarter of 2012 because users held on to their replacements in many markets ahead of the iPhone 5 wider roll out," the firm added.