Apple has picked a few points of market share in the US over the past 12-months, thanks presumably to T-Mobile and Virgin Mobile finally offering the popular products as part of their affordable lineups.The numbers aren’t astronomical. Apple only picked up 3.5% market share, going from 38.4% in may 2012 to 41.9% at the same time this year. What is of particular interest is that while Android picked up a mere 0.1% market share in the US, moving up to a flat 52% from 51.9%, it made huge gains in most other regions globally while Apple made little progress, stagnated or even lost ground.
Europe just isn’t that in to iOS
Europe has always been a hot market for Android, but even we were surprised by some of these numbers.
Samsung alone accounted for a 50% market share in the first 3 months of sales 2013 – a sales figure that is usually representative of Android as a whole in the US, rather than just one of its manufacturers. Some countries like Great Britain have almost similar stats to the US, with GB showing 29.9% iOS sales and 56.6% Android. This is the closest a European nation came and it represents a 12% dip in iOS popularity between the US and Great Britain.
Germany saw a huge jump up from 68.6% to 76.7% in Android sales. Meanwhile iOS dropped from 17.8% to 15% - just one third of the market share Apple boasts in the US.
Spain was most surprising, seeing a rise from 84.4% to a whopping 92.5% in Android sales, leaving iOS with a paltry 4.2% share.
The rest of Europe is similar: France saw just a 0.1% increase in iOS sales but an 8.5% jump in Android. In Italy iOS lost 5.2% market share while Android gained an impressive 19.1%.
It’s not just Europe
Australia, well-known by tech manufacturers for being a gadget-loving market, saw almost no change in iOS market share, with it dropping from 28.6% to 28.5%. Android, on the other hand, saw growth from 58.2% to 62.4%. While a difference of just 4.2% may seem small,it is still larger than Apple’s 3.5% victory in the US.
Mexico demonstrated the greatest pickup in Android products, jumping from 27.1% to 60.3% - an incredibly 33.2% market share gain in 12 months. These outlying numbers are likely due to Android picking up much of the budget phone market in Mexico. Former kings of pre-paid, BlackBerry and Nokia’s Symbian OS lost considerable market share in this same period - - 21% and -16.9% respectively.
A look at the future
Could the indifference to iOS shown in the figures for Europe be indicative of America’s future? It is true that for now Apple is seeing a modest increase in iPhone sales in the USA, but will cheaper iPhones dampen the enthusiasm of people who already own them? Now that iPhones are readily available to more and more US customers via pre-paid plans, it’s possible that people will begin to grow bored of them.
Apple’s rumored range of affordable, colorful iPhones may be more keenly needed than we had first thought. Not only may it serve to reinvigorate public interest in the iconic smartphone line, but could go a long way towards picking up some of that lower-end market share that, until now, Android has had limited competition in.
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