Apple's UK market share climbs to 42.5 percent as Android dominance falters

Carly Page
@CarlyPage_
07 January 2015

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STRONG SALES of the iPhone 6 saw Apple increase its share of the UK smartphone market to a record 42.5 percent in November, according to figures from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, while Android saw its biggest fall yet.

The bean counters at Kantar have thrown up their latest statistics on the smartphone market, which deliver good news for Apple and not such good news for Google.

In the UK Apple saw its marketshare top 42.5 percent in November, up from 30.3 percent a year earlier and up from 39.5 percent in Q3, which Kantar credited to strong sales of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.

These sales can likely be credited for iOS 8's growing adoption rate too, with Apple revealing seperately this week that the latest version of its software is now on 68 percent of devices, up 4 percent compared to December.

Carolina Milanesi, chief of research at Kantar, noted: "The iPhone 6 was the best selling phone in the three months through November 2014, capturing 19 percent of smartphone sales."

This growth came at the expense of Android, which saw its share tumble 6.7 percent year on year to 49.7 percent.

This drop was largely driven by the well-documented dip in sales of Samsung smartphones, but Kantar notes that some Android OEMs, Motorola in particular, saw a growth in share during the same period.

Milanesi said: "A decline in Android market share does not necessarily translate into bad news for all the ecosystem's players.

"The choice of brands and devices within the ecosystem empowers consumers to drive different fortunes for the players in it.

"In the three months ending November, Samsung particularly felt the pressure and saw its market share decline across Europe and in the US.

"By contrast Motorola's share grew thanks to the refresh of the Moto X and Moto G offering good value for money."

Android remains the dominant mobile operating system in the UK, but iOS has overtaken it in Japan, where Apple holds 53.8 percent of the market compared with Google's 42.4 percent.

Apple is creeping up on Google in the US too, holding a 44.9 percent share compared with 45 percent.

Still, if you thought Google was having a bad time, Microsoft has had it worse. In the UK, Windows Phone's share slipped from 10.6 percent in November 2013 to seven percent in 2014.

Other operating systems, which includes BlackBerry, saw their share slip from 2.7 percent to a mere 0.8 percent year on year. µ