Huawei sees big growth in Europe, while Samsung and Apple lock down the US
As we enter the final months of 2015, the smartphone market is quite a different place than it was at the start of the year. Kantar Worldpanel has identified a couple of important trends, noting a big market shift in Europe while the US consolidates behind the two largest players.
In the US, Apple and Samsung now account for 66 percent of all smartphone sales, and combined account for 9 out of 10 of the top selling models in the US. According to the research, US customers looking to upgrade next year slightly prefer Apple over Samsung, by a margin of 43 to 34 percent respectively.
The majority of US consumers are looking either at an iPhone or Galaxy handset for next year’s upgrade.
That said, Android’s market share continues to grow in the US, up from 62 percent a year ago to 66 percent in Q3. Meanwhile, iOS has shrunk from 33 percent to 29 percent of the market. The situation is different in Europe, where Android has been losing ground to iOS in some of the continent’s largest markets. The United Kingdom now has a greater portion of iOS users than at any point before, while Germany has seen a 5.5 percent drop in Android’s share from a year before.
However, some Android manufacturers have been able to buck this trend to leap up in market share. Huawei has risen to second place out of all Android brands in Europe in Q3, up from sixth place in 2014. Huawei is also the top brand in China at the moment, followed by Xiaomi, meaning that the company is gaining a substantial international presence.
“With a wider portfolio of products ranging from the high-end all the way to the low-end, Huawei made particular inroads in Spain and Italy.” – Carolina Milanesi, chief of research at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech
Huawei handsets:
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Huawei has managed to leap over several of its competitors in Europe as they have struggled with sales this year. HTC, Motorola (Lenovo) and Sony has all seen their shares slip as their latest products have not struck the same chord with consumers. Both HTC and Sony have reported particular poor mobile financial results this year, posing questions about how much longer these companies will remain interested in the smartphone market.
2015 has been testing for a number of smartphone manufacturers and 2016 could be a make or break year for a few of them. If you want to sift through some more of the data yourself, check out this interactive data visualisation below.
http://www.kantarworldpanel.com/global/smartphone-os-market-share/
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