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In the circles most of us hang out, it might seem incredible that featurephones – aka dumb phones – were still outselling smartphones until recently, but that was indeed the case right up to the first quarter of this year. The latest Gartner figures show that smartphones finally broke ahead in Q2, achieving 51.8 percent of worldwide phone sales.

Smartphones accounted for 51.8 percent of mobile phone sales in the second quarter of 2013, resulting in smartphone sales surpassing feature phone sales for the first time,” said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner. Asia/Pacific, Latin America and Eastern Europe exhibited the highest smartphone growth rates of 74.1 percent, 55.7 percent and 31.6 percent respectively, as smartphone sales grew in all regions …

There was good news for both Samsung and Google in the figures … 
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Confirming our report from last night, Google has told The Verge that they have no affiliation whatsoever with Carrier IQ, but rather the OEMs of Android handsets do.

We do not have an affiliation with CarrierIQ. Android is an open source effort and we do not control how carriers or OEMs customize their devices.

Carrier IQ news has blown up this afternoon, after being found on numerous handsets currently offered on the market. While Verizon has said that Carrier IQ can’t be found on their devices, Apple, RIM, Nokia, Windows Mobile, and most Android devices do have the tracking software. For now, if you’re Android device is affected you can install CyanogenMod or just wait for all of this to blow over after an update, in a few days.

Carrier IQ’s statement:

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