Apple may have fared better in its recent quarterly earnings than some were predicting, but iOS is still being obliterated by Android in overall marketshare worldwide.
How much so? According to new figures published by Gartner, Android is currently the mobile operating system found on a whopping 86.2 percent of handsets worldwide. In other words, based on this single metric, it’s not even close!
iOS, by comparison, lost two percentage points in 2016’s second quarter against the comparable quarter last year: falling slightly from 14.6 percent worldwide to 12.9 percent.
Apple saw its biggest declines in the Greater China and mature Asia/Pacific regions — adding up to a sizable 26 percent drop in iPhone sales. Sales declined slightly in the United States and Western Europe, which are Apple’s strongest markets.
On the other end of the spectrum, the company did phenomenally well in Eurasia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe, with sales growing 95 per cent, year on year.
Photo: Gartner
The explanation for Android’s continued ascension, meanwhile, comes down to a mix of factors. There are premium devices like the Samsung Galaxy S7, which are having a positive impact at the higher end of the market, in which Apple operates.
Further down the smartphone food chain, it’s the same old story about growing smartphone adoption among people buying affordably-priced low end phones from manufacturers like Huawei and Oppo.
If Gartner’s figures are correct, Samsung was arguably the quarters M.V.P. It is the overall volume leader in the smartphone industry with almost 10 percent more market share than Apple, with successes at both the high-end and also with its lower-cost Galaxy A and Galaxy J phones, which performed well against low-cost Chinese rivals.
Of course, ultimately market share is a flawed metric to look at when it comes to picking the winners and losers. There are plenty of areas (such as building low-cost phones) in which Apple doesn’t try to compete, and lots of low-cost smartphone makers who are selling plenty of units, but barely making any money due to the race to the bottom.
To complicate matters even further, Apple also has the rest of its ecosystem to bring in money — while the recent Q3 earnings focused on how its strong services are performing particularly well for Cupertino right now.
Are you surprised by these results? Leave your comments below.
Source: Gartner
Via: TechCrunch
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
14 responses to “iOS falls as Android’s market share skyrockets”
There’s a simple reason for that. While Samsung and Google are releasing phones like Galaxy Note 7 packed with cutting edge features, Android gains massive usability upgrades – iOS is getting new emoji and animated balloons in messages…
Get your shit together Apple. I expect more from the biggest and most powerful IT company in the world. I am seriously considering switching to Note 7…
Apple should help poor people who cannot afford $600-$1K phones by releasing really inexpensive iphones. Sure that will cut into margins, but on the other hand, but Apple has to face the music – these days, $100-$200 Android phones are pretty wonderful, capable to doing almost everything that flagships phones can. There is no reason for cash strapped consumers to spend a lot for smart phones anymore. In the long term, it’s all about services, as hardware sales plateau and then fall for smart phone market, and Apple has to look at the long term, not short term profit maximization.
That’s ridiculous. Why would Apple want to bring in people who can’t afford their products? That doesn’t just cut into profits, it puts a huge burden on engineering, manufacturing, support, development, retail, etc., for no good reason other than to improve their market share.
People have plenty of reason to spend a lot on smart phones, as evidenced by the fact that hundreds of millions of people do exactly that every year or two. People who can’t afford an iPhone have other options, and poor people are not the kind of users that a premium brand like Apple concerns themselves with.
Well then let Android continue to expand it’s domination! Android market share will hit 90% and go beyond if Apple does not introduce cheap iphone to compete head on with amazing entry-level Android devices like Xiaomi Redmi 3S which retail around $100. The gap between entry level and flagship devices have never been narrower and getting narrower still. Who cares if smart phone cpu is blazing fast, if it only result in couple of micro-seconds of speed gain? For most consumers, even in wealthy countries, anything above $200 is considered a significant expense. So keeping smart phone affordable benefits not only poor people, but also more main stream consumers, as seen by continuing encroachment of Android phone market share around the global. Sure if Apple is happy to have only single digit market share going forward, it should stay out of sub $400 smart phone market for benefit of Google and Android phone manufacturers. Iphone fanboys have been wrong all the time, predicting demise of Android first, and then arguing iphone will take majority of global smart phone market share. Wrong and wrong again. ifanboys will never learn.
I agree, let them dominate market share.
Apple is never going to dominate smartphone market share again, and that’s fine. There are literally tens of thousands of Android devices on the market. How could one company that only sells five phones possibly compete with that? And yet, they still control 15% of the global market share. iOS is still the second most popular mobile platform in the world, iPhone is the best selling consumer electronics product in history by a huge margin. And most important, Apple is making almost all of the profits for the entire market. Other than Samsung, every other smartphone manufacture is losing money hand over first trying to snatch up a piece of that Android market share. Something tells me Tim Cook isn’t crying about some bottom feeders.
Well we don’t want to be the mass.. we want to be among the niche and most coveted tech phone ever.. IPHONE rocks.. samsung can add pen and pencil perhaps a magical paper too.. or may even provide drinking water via its USB port.. WHO CARES.. as long as iPhone exists we know that Quality beats gimmicks… and there is the difference
It hasn’t been close for years now, but these kinds of articles crop up like clockwork this time of year, every year. Of course Apple is going to see a dip in sales as the iPhone 6s is getting long in the tooth. Everyone knows an update is right around the corner.
“Everyone” knows an update is around the corner. But *nobody* knows if the update is going to significantly reverse the downward trend of iPhone market share. Apple’s market share has been helped recently by the lower-margin iPhone SE, with some decline in earnings and profitability. But they have some headwinds in gaining at the high end:
(1) lower expectations for the iPhone 7 compared to the future iPhone 8 may cause buyers to wait another year;
(2) successful roll-out of Samsung’s Note 7 could reduce the number of Android users switching to iOS and may even cause a reverse flow;
(3) increasing quality of mid-range phones (under $400) from China (and eventually India) is changing the definition of “high end”.
Apple had the first-mover advantage in the smartphone market and has been able to sell phones at a premium price while keeping costs low relative to other producers, hence their astronomic profits. So they’ve invested less on R&D than Samsung, for example, but is starting to increase spending. They’ve used their market share to drive hard bargains from contract manufacturers — if their market share decreases much more, Apple will find itself competing with every other smartphone manufacturer.
Apple will NEVER reverse the market share trend – but that’s not a bad thing. Google and it’s partners will continue to dump Android devices on to the market which, even if Apple doubles it’s sales, won’t affect “market share”.
As PC manufactures found out, playing the Marketshare game is expensive and doesn’t gain you enough to make a difference.
This kind of article doesn’t pop up often…..it’s 3 consecutive quarters of lower marketshare
Just like 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015. 2010 was the last year where iPhone market share grew over two consecutive. In every year after, market share increased significantly in Q4, and declined for the next three quarters.
Despite all the gloom and doom, Apple’s market share is still better than than it was in Q2 2014, while Samsung’s is down. Samsung just barely increased their market share over last year, but they are still down a whopping ten points from just four years ago. Nobody is losing their heads over that, but let Apple have a predictably bad quarter and you’d think they’re considering filing for bankruptcy.
TL;DR. iOS Market share 12.9% iOS profit share 95%
The sad reality is that most of these folks could not afford a high end phone and since the iPhone doesn’t make a budget version they had no choice but to settle for an Android.
Seriously, Apple, you now need to open up a little bit like Android did 5 years ago to increase usability. You act like North Korea, Apple.