iPhone success does little to dent Android's smartphone dominance

There are signs that the 5.5 inch iPhone 6 Plus could be a hit in the huge Chinese market, but Apple's iOS market share there is even further behind Android there than it is in Australia. Photo: Bloomberg

Paul Smith

The launch of new iPhones has given Apple a boost in the Australian market as new global sales figures have showed it had a strong quarter despite the dominance of Google's Android.

The latest smartphone sales data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech showed that for the three months ending September Apple's iOS mobile operating system market share grew by 2.1 per cent on to 34.7 per cent. The numbers still pale however in comparison to the number of Australians using smartphones that run on Google's Android operating system.

The stats covered the first few days of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus going on sale, so Apple will be banking on improved standing in the next quarterly numbers.

Android rules the roost by some distance in all of the geographic regions covered by the research, and in Australia increased its market share to 58.1 per cent, up from 55.6 per cent 12 months ago. Aside from Apple and Android, Microsoft saw a year on year market share drop of 3.1 per cent to register just 6.2 per cent of the local market.

The numbers show how much better iPhones continue to perform in Australia, in comparison to other parts of the world where Android has a much bigger lead.

Source: Kantar Worldpanel ComTech

Across the biggest European markets of the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain Android has 73.9 per cent of the market, with Apple back on 15.4 per cent. In the US meanwhile Android market share climbed 4.5 per cent to 61.8 per cent, with Apple down 3.3 per cent at 32.6 per cent.

Perhaps of most interest to Apple chief executive Tim Cook will be the Chinese market, which is the world's largest for smartphone and where Android has strengthened a seemingly unassailable lead.

Android had 83.4 per cent of the huge growing market in the three months, in comparison to 15.2 per cent for Apple, which had grown from 13.8 per cent the previous year.

The Chinese market is dominated by local brand Xiaomi. The Xiaomi Red Rice 1S and Xiaomi Rice Note models were the two top selling smartphones over the past three months helping it to secure a 30.3 per cent market share. Samsung was next on 18.4 per cent.

In a positive sign for Apple's iPhone 6 Plus the research found that 16 per cent of smartphones sold in China over the past three months had a screen size of 5.5 inches or larger. The larger iPhone will be launched in China, along with the iPhone 6 in time for Chinese New Year.

Kantar Worldpanel ComTech analyst Dominic Sunnebo said initial sales of the new iPhone models had overwhelmingly been from existing iPhone owners . He said this was unsurprising as consumers who already owned Apple products tended to remain loyal and be most keen to buy new models.

Attracting new customers away from Android was more likely to happen once offers and promotions on the new iPhones started to kick-in, Mr Sunnebo said.

Kantar's stats also showed the iPhone 6 has outsold the larger iPhone 6 Plus by five-to-one across Europe's top five markets.

While the operating systems don't look great for Apple, the iPhone still remains the most popular handset by a large margin, with the Android market split by an enormous range of suppliers, led by Samsung.

The research said that despite Apple's share declining 3 percentage points in the US during the three months ending in September, compared with the same period last year, it was clear that demand for the iPhone 6 has been very healthy.

It said the US market was strong with smartphones sales growing 35 per cent over the past year. The report found competition had been reinvigorated by LG and Motorola increasing their market share through the recently launched LG G3 and Motorola Moto X, saying the brands were now better positioned to compete with flagship products from Samsung and HTC in the Android field.

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