Android still building on dominant market share

Android still building on dominant market share

Android continues to tighten its grip on the mobile market, with new figures from Kantar Worldpanel putting Google’s operating service in a commanding lead over rival Apple.

Data from Q1 2016 show the largest growth in Android usage for two years. In the EU5 marketplace (comprising the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain), some 75.6 per cent of handsets were said to be running Android – a quarterly increase of 7.1 percentage points. Meanwhile in China, the percentage point increase was just under six, taking the total market penetration to 77 per cent. The biggest quarterly growth came in the US, where a 7.3 percentage point rise took Android’s market share to 65.5 per cent.

Figures to make Apple humble?

It wasn’t quite such good news for Apple, which saw its EU5 market share drop from 20.2 per cent to 18.9 per cent. To add further woe, 3.3 per cent of new Android users made the change from iOS. In China, 21.1 per cent of smartphones now run iOS, compared to 26.1 per cent last year.

Though these figures may make humbling reading for Apple, they certainly didn’t do the worst – that was Microsoft. Market share for Windows phones dropped five percentage points to a lowly 4.9 per cent.

Looking specifically at devices, the Samsung Galaxy S7 arguably performed best, having placed in fifth despite only being available for a few weeks during the sales period. There was similarly good news for its predecessor, the S6, though this has been attributed to price drops ahead of the new version going on sale.

Mobile analyst for Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, Lauren Guenveur, spoke about the results on kantarworldpanel.com: “This is the strongest growth for Android across the EU5 in more than two years. What’s more, the growth is coming not just from one or two players, but from different brands and ecosystems, varying from region to region.”

Published On: May 23, 2016/By /Categories: All news items, Mobile Devices/
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