According to new
data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, the iPhone has regained some market share with strong sales in Europe, Japan and Australia in the first quarter of 2014. This was echoed in better than expected iPhone sales growth in last week’s quarterly earnings from Apple.
The company said that it sold 43.7 million iPhones in the quarter, easily beating analyst consensus estimates of 37 million. Apple’s iPad sales were less than expected however.
Smartphone market share
Source: Kantar Worldpanel ComTech (April 2014)
Despite the overall upbeat iPhone report, Kantar says that iOS share in the US and Chinese markets is actually down for the first three months of the year. In the five major EU markets, Android-based handsets have a 70-plus percent market share. In China Android devices control 80 percent of the market.
Mobile traffic data doesn’t quite align with the market-share figures above however. Compare the figures above with StatCounter mobile web traffic data below (does not include tablets):
US:
iPhone: 53 percent
Android: 40.7 percent
Windows: 1.6 percent
Europe:
Android: 55.8 percent
iPhone: 32.7 percent
Windows: 3.5 percent
China:
Android: 67.1 percent
iPhone: 23.4 percent
Windows: 1 percent
One of the observations Kantar makes about the Chinese market in particular is that “devices with a screen larger than 5-inches made up 40 percent of smartphone sales in March.” Apple is widely expected to release one if not two larger-screen iPhone models later this year. These larger display devices could also drive new market share gains.
Kantar reported that Nokia-made Windows Phones suffered last quarter under fierce competition at the lower end of the Android price spectrum. Microsoft now owns the Nokia hardware division; the $7 billion dollar acquisition formally closed last week.
Kantar says these market share data are based “the largest continuous research consumer mobile phone tracking panel of its kind in the world.”
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