Samsung Electronics Co.'s Tizen operating system retained its status as the fourth most-used smartphone platform in the world in the fourth quarter of 2015, a global market tracker said Friday.

According to Strategy Analytics, the number of Tizen-powered smartphones sold around the globe came to 900,000 units in the October-December period, rising sharply from 200,000 units posted in the first quarter.

Although the fourth-quarter figure marked a slight drop from 1 million units posted in the third quarter, the researcher said the Tizen OS maintained its fourth spot in the last quarter.

Samsung's Tizen captured the fourth spot after beating the Blackberry OS for the first time a quarter earlier.

For all of 2015, the Tizen OS remained the No. 5 player, but Strategy Analytics said it expects the presence of the platform to grow down the road.

"Given Samsung's brand equity and well-established distribution channel in India and other emerging markets, Tizen OS is well-positioned to grow further," the researcher said.

Samsung has been tapping deeper into the Indian handset market through the Z1 and Z3 smartphones, which run on Tizen. On the back of the strong performances of the devices, the firm took up 25.7 percent of the Indian smartphone market in 2015, standing as the No. 1 player.

In 2015, Google's Android and Apple's iOS platforms dominated the market with a combined market share of 96.3 percent. Last year, the number of Android smartphones sold around the globe reached 1.1 billion units, while Apple also sold 231.5 million units. (Yonhap)