iPhone dominates only in the USA and Japan
Judging by sales for the fourth quarter of 2012, the iPhone remains the main smartphone only in two regions – America and Japan. In all other countries, gadgets based on Google’s OS win by a significant margin.
The growth of Windows Phone is observed only in small European markets. Such conclusions were reached by Kantar Worldpanel Comtech, which recently published information for the 12-week period ending December 23, 2012.
The level of smartphone penetration continues to grow. It is quite possible to expect that in a few years these devices will completely replace conventional cellular. But so far the situation is not so clear – the dominance of smartphones is observed only in a few countries. One of them is the UK, where the penetration rate of these devices is 61%.
Using a regular phone, it’s hard to be as happy as this girl.
As for other countries, they do not have such a high level yet. Even in the United States, it is 42%, which is slightly more than in the developed regions of China – 39%. In Japan, due to the high popularity of phones with advanced functionality, the penetration rate is only 24%. This, by the way, does not prevent the Japanese version of Google Play from being the most profitable in the world.
The main aggressor in the platform market today is Android, if we do not talk about the American market, where its share has decreased by 0.6% to 44.2% since the fourth quarter of 2011. In the UK over the past year, the platform has gained 10.5% of the market, taking over 54.4% of the market. In total, Android took almost the same 10.2% from competitors in the European five countries, thereby capturing 61.1% of the market. The dynamics in China is unknown, but here Google devices account for a significant 72.5% of sales.
Samsung accounts for a large share of Android sales. As our colleagues from TechCrunch write: you see Android, you mean Samsung. In Europe alone, 43% of cell phones sold, including smartphones, are manufactured under the Korean brand name. In China, by the way, there are only 23% of them: native tubes are cheaper and almost not inferior in quality now. As for Samsung’s share in global sales, they amount to 27%.
In terms of smartphone sales, Apple leads only in its native and Japanese markets. In the US, in the fourth quarter of 2012, the iPhone accounted for 51.2% of the market, which is 2.1% less than in the third quarter, but 6.3% more than in the fourth quarter of 2011. In Japan, Apple’s share is 66.2%. A good growth dynamics of the iPhone (4.9%) is also observed in Japan, but so far the device accounts for only 24.9% of the market there. In general, the positions of the “apple” smartphone cannot be called good. Especially if we talk about Europe, in some countries where interest in the iPhone is frankly falling: the UK – minus 1.7%, Spain – minus 1.8%.
The share of Windows Phone still remains insignificant. In the USA over the year, its share increased by only 0.4% to 2.6%, in the European Five countries by 2.8% to 5.4%. In China, Windows Phone costs only 0.9% of devices, in Japan by 0.9%. The plan to transfer the audience from Symbian to Windows Phone with the help of Nokia, in general, failed. The only country where something similar has happened is Italy. 11.1% of the 14.8% that Symbian lost over the year went to the Microsoft mobile platform.
Photo: kantarworldpanel
