Apples share of smartphone sales fall to 18.3%

A new report released by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, a market research, information and consultancy company, shows that there has been a steep fall in Apple’s share of smartphone market. The countries covered in the research were U.S., U.K., Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Australia. Over a twelve-month period, ending 12th June, Apple’s share has fallen from 30.6 per cent to 18.3 per cent. During the same time the sale of Android handsets has gone up from 10.7 per cent to 45.2 per cent.

However, the decline in net market share for Apple does not mean that the company is selling fewer iPhones. The sale of the iPhones is continuing at a healthy pace, and a major chunk of Apple’s profits come from its iPhone sales. The decline is merely reflection of the fact that the smartphone market has now expanded to a very large extent.

The report also reveals that as much as three-quarters of the total Android’s sales are coming from people who are upgrading from an older phone. Only 1.4 per cent of Android sales are from former iPhone owners. So it is clear that Android’s gains are not at the cost of Apple. The survey also shows that both Android and Apple users tend to be intensely loyal to their OS and there is very little switching between them. The strongest performance for Google’s OS is in USA, where Android handsets have cornered a 57 per cent share of smartphone market, up from 19 per cent in the same period a year earlier. Android’s success in USA has come almost entirely at the expense of BlackBerry, which saw a 23.7% decline in its share of sales.

However, in case of BlackBerry, eight out of ten buyers are those who are upgrading from a feature phone to their first smartphone. Android is now the top OS in six of the eight countries that were covered in the survey. Only in Italy and Spain, Symbian does slightly better than Android. The highest market share for Android is in Japan, where it is powering 64.7 per cent of handsets sold. Although there are now more iPhones in use, they represent a smaller proportion of sales.
 

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