The latest market research report from Kantar Worldpanel Comtech shows that Google‘s Mobile Operating System, Android, is maintaining its lead as the most popular OS for smartphones. Kantar surveyed the United States, Australia, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and the UK by looking at sales of device on a 12-week rolling cycle. The end result showed that Android on average was 64.2% of all smartphone sales. the one country that Android did not dominate was Japan where Apple held on to slight lead with 49.2%. The report showed that Android was in the lead in different types of countries an economies including a whopping 93.5% share of smartphone sales in Spain.
Kantar also claims that according to 240,000 interviews it conducted in the U.S. and the 1 million in Europe, Google keep growing its lead in the the coming months.
Kantar’s global consumer insight director, Dominic Sunnebo, states that, “We expect to see a further spike in [Android’s] share in the coming months, as sales from the HTC One start coming through and the Samsung Galaxy S4 is launched. This will pile pressure on Apple, BlackBerry and Nokia to keep their products front of consumers’ minds in the midst of a Samsung and HTC marketing blitz.”
Interestingly Kantar’s data shows that with iOS still behind Android in the US because of no new iOS device getting ready to launch soon Windows Phone has made modest gains. Kantar claims that the Microsoft developed OS has seen a 1.9 percentage increase to a total of 5.6% thanks to Nokia devices. The pattern remained roughly the same in other markets with Android dominating while Windows Phone took small steps ahead. “Across the 5 European countries covered, Windows Phone accounted for 6.5% of sales, up 2.5 percentage points; with Android at 68.8% of sales, up over 10 percentage points. Similarly, in Australia, Android was nearly 63% of sales, up 8.8 pp, while Windows Phone was up 0.8 pp to just over 4% of sales.”
Analyst Mary-Ann Parlato claims that Windows is getting users because manufacturers like Nokia are really focusing on first time smartphone buyers. Kantar thinks that “the accessible, colourful, and cheap Lumias that Nokia is pumping out are appealing to those buyers, with feature phone owners representing 52% of Windows Phone buyers in the U.S.”
The report also sheds some lights on specific manufacturer strategy in the UK as Sunnebo explains that, “Kantar Worldpanel ComTech data clearly shows that different Samsung models are appealing to a very different type of consumer. The Galaxy Note II is popular with affluent 25-34 year old males, the Galaxy SIII Mini appeals to younger females, the Galaxy Ace to older females while the Galaxy SIII has broad appeal. The fact that Samsung has so many models available in the market is not indicative of a scatter gun approach, simply a realisation that different consumers demand very different handsets, both in functionality, design and price.”
Source: TechCrunch
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