Apple iOS Snagged 42% of US Market During Holiday Season
Apple upped its U.S. market share over the recent three-month holiday period to nab 42% of smartphone sales. Android-based devices still lead in overall sales, but sales dipped year-over-year.
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.
[cnxvideo id=”508883″ placement=”ros”]Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) had an excellent 2016 holiday season, thank you very much. In the three-month period from November 2016 through January 2017, Apple’s iOS-powered smartphones accounted for 42% of all U.S. sales, a year-over-year gain of 2.9%.
The Android operating system from Google/Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) captured 56.4% of the U.S. smartphone market to maintain its lead over Apple, but Android’s share dropped 1.8% year over year.
The data were reported Wednesday by Kantar Worldpanel and showed that Apple posted gains in many regions of the globe, not including, however, urban China or Japan.
[nativounit]
Android captured 74.3% of the European Union’s five big markets — the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Spain — compared with 22.7% for Apple’s iOS. The iPhone remains the top-seller in Britain, Germany and France.
In urban China, Android accounted for 83.2% of all smartphone sales, a gain of 9.3 percentage points. Chinese maker Huawei accounted for 26.6% of all smartphones sold in urban China during the three-month period, with Apple nabbing 16.6% and Xiaomi accounting for 14.5%.
Kantar Worldpanel global consumer insight director Lauren Guenveur also commented on the recent Mobile World Congress 2017 show in Barcelona:
February’s Mobile World Congress 2017 demonstrated the true state of the market, with re-emerging brand names Nokia and Blackberry capturing a lot of attention, but now operating on Android rather than on their own legacy operating systems.
Even the new Nokia 3310 feature phone gets a mention, but no one really expects that to make a big dent in sales of Android and iOS devices. As Guenveur pointed out:
Seventy percent of the US domestic market is dominated by Apple and Samsung, and the third largest manufacturer, LG, accounted for an additional 11.1% of sales in the three months ending January 2017.
[wallst_email_signup]
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Paul Ausick has been writing for 247Wallst.com for more than a decade. He has written extensively on investing in the energy, defense, and technology sectors. In a previous life, he wrote technical documentation and managed a marketing communications group in Silicon Valley.
He has a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Chicago and now lives in Montana, where he fishes for trout in the summer and stays inside during the winter.
