If you’re buying a phone in Australia, there’s a pretty damn good chance that it’s running Android or iOS. Apple is far and away the most popular brand, but it’s not the most popular platform. 50.1 per cent of all phones sold in Australia in the middle three months of 2016 ran the Android operating system, just beating out Apple’s iOS. But Blackberry or Windows Phone? Hardly worth writing home about.
Kantar Worldpanel’s just-released research for the the three months ending November last year shows 50.1 per cent sales market share for Android in Australia, a slight edge on the 46.4 per cent sales market share of iOS. Now, with the only smartphone running iOS being Apple’s iPhone, we know straight away what the most popular single handset was, with Android’s share split between dozens of different handsets at different price points. But it’s an interesting stat nonetheless to see Android tip the scales at more than half of all sales.
Those numbers, though, actually paint more bleak a picture for Google’s operating system and the smartphones that run it than you’d think. Android sales declined in share in the US, the UK and France, with those drops being gained by iOS. In the US, the iPhone 7, 7 Plus and 6s were the three most popular handsets, with Samsung’s Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge taking fourth and fifth spot respectively. Google’s late entry into the market with the Pixel was a bright point in the US. In the other big move worldwide, China loves Android — 80 per cent of phones sold ran it — with homegrown heroes like Huawei and Oppo taking the lion’s share of sales.
You can take a look at Australia’s data below, and compare it to the rest of the world. [Kantar Worldpanel]