Android Gains On iOS Again

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For radio industry executives looking for a further push of NextRadio or TV executives looking for new ways to push video to consumers via smartphones, availability in the Google Play store may be a tad more valuable than that in the iTunes Store — based on the latest smartphone OS data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.


For the three months ending October 31, 2017, iOS share fell.

Why? For Kantar it’s clear the impact was tied to the the flagship iPhone X not being available to buy in the month of October.

Perhaps the bigger news is that, while Windows continued to drop in share on a global level, Android was able to gain by 8.2% in the U.S.

Urban China remained a bright spot for Apple, but its share edged up just 0.5% in August-September-October, to reach 17.4%.

“It was somewhat inevitable that Apple would see volume share fall once we had a full comparative month of sales taking into account the non-flagship iPhone 8 vs. the flagship iPhone 7 from 2016,” said Dominic Sunnebo, Global Business Unit Director for Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. “This decrease is significant and puts pressure on the iPhone X to perform. Considering the complete overhaul that the iPhone X offers, consumers may be postponing their purchase decisions until they can test the iPhone X and decide whether the higher price, compared to the iPhone 8, is worth the premium to them.”

With holiday shopping in full swing, the time is now critical for Apple to determine which smartphones consumers will ultimately pay for.

Length of phone ownership is also a factor stateside, Sunnebo says.

“As of October 2017, 35.3% of Apple’s installed base customers across Europe and the U.S. had owned their iPhones for more than two years,” he said.

That’s up from 30.1% a year earlier and signifies, in his view, “considerable pent-up demand within Apple’s base.”

Thus, “In pure value terms, it is likely the iPhone X average selling price will more than make up for a dip in sales of older iPhone models,” Sunnebo said.

Smartphone OS Sales Share (%) 

USA

Aug/Sept/Oct
2016

Aug/Sept/Oct 2017

% pt. Change

Android

58

66.2

8.2

iOS

40.6

32.9

-7.6

Windows

1.2

0.5

-0.7

 

Other

0.2

0.4

0.1