New data released this week by research firm Kantar suggests that Android’s market share has declined in the last quarter and that Apple’s iPhone has filled that gap.
Sales of Android devices accounted for 56.2 per cent of the market in the second quarter of 2013, which means that Google-powered phones are still dominating, but that figures is down one per cent on the second quarter results from last year.
By contrast, Apple’s stock is on the up, increasing by 5.2 per cent over last year, taking the company’s share of the market to 30.5 per cent however, analyst Dominic Sunnebo from Kantar thinks that this might not be all thanks to Apple’s flagship device, the iPhone 5.
'Although the flagship iPhone 5 was widely credited with boosting Apple’s global results last week, much of the market share growth for [Apple] in Britain is thanks to the competitively priced [three-year-old] iPhone 4 attracting first-time smartphone buyers,' Sunnebo stated.
It will be interesting to see how this trend develops after Apple releases its upcoming device, expected to be the iPhone 5S, and indeed how the potential budget iPhone Light, or iPhone 6, could affect the figures, although it’s still unclear at this stage whether the cheaper iPhone will be sold outside of Asia.
Android’s success in the last couple of years is thanks, in no small part, to the diversity of hardware running the platform. Several large manufacturers produce Android devices, offering a broader choice in terms of function, and ultimately price, so those who wanted to jump on the smartphone bandwagon have been able to do so without spending a small fortune.
However, it’s estimated that 90 per cent of all mobile phone users in the UK are now using smartphones, which could explain why Android sales are levelling off after a period of seemingly unlimited growth.
Kantar’s data proved to be grim reading for both BlackBerry and Microsoft too, accounting for just 4.1 per cent and 8.1 per cent of the UK market respectively, proving that that battle for smartphone superiority really is a two-horse race between Android and Apple at the moment.
by tcrammond via Featured Articles
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