Despite the release of a new iPhone from Apple, Google’s Android operating system has gained smartphone market share in most major markets during the October quarter.
However Australia and Japan appear to have bucked the trend, according to new figures from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.
The figures show Android’s market share in Australia fell year-on-year to 54.9%, down from 60.4% for the same quarter a year earlier.
The figures also mark a sharp decline for Android use since the first quarter of this year, when it was used on 69.4% of all Australian smartphones.
In contrast, the Australian release of the new iPhone on September 20 helped push the Australian market share of Apple iOS from 32.8% a year ago to 35%, and nearly seven percentage points up from its 28.1% market share in the first quarter.
However, the customer flow wasn’t solely from Android to iOS, with both Windows Phone (4% to 7.3%) and BlackBerry (0.8% to 1.6%) growing their Australian market share for the quarter.
This has seen Australia buck the trend in most major markets, where Android recorded year-on-year growth, including Germany (75.5% to 77.5%), Britain (54% to 55.6%), France (60.4% to 68.1%), Italy (57.3% to 68.8%), Spain (84% to 90.1%), the US (47.7% to 53.6%) and China (69.7% to 78.1%).
More alarmingly for Apple, despite the release of a new iPhone, Apple actually recorded year-on-year falls across a number of key markets, including Germany (15.4% to 13.8%), Britain (32.7% to 28.7%), France (19.5% to 15.9%), Italy (18.5% to 10.1%), the US (47.2% to 40.8%) and China (3.9% to 3.5%).
Even worse, Windows Phone has overtaken iOS as the second most popular smartphone platform in Italy, by a margin of 16.1% to 10.1%, and is closing in on Apple in France, 12.5% to 15.9%.
The only other major market to buck the trend is Japan.
There, Google Android recorded a market share fall from the first quarter from 44% to 36.2%, while iOS gained 50.2% to 61.1%
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
