Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, a market analysis division of WPP, has today published its latest figures on mobile device sales across a number of key markets, and it looks like something of a milestone for Android: this is the first time in ComTechs recording of sales that Android has accounted for more than half of all smartphone sales in the US, the biggest markets in Europe, and Australia.
The newer entrant, Microsofts Windows Phone is showing positive signs, in that its percentage of sales is growing in different markets, but it remains in the single digits, and will be hard pressed to make inroads in the short term with Android device makers continuing to perform so well.
The sales, recorded over the last 12 weeks that ended June 10, put Android sales in a range going from 49.6 percent of all smartphone sales in Italy to 84.1 percent of all smartphone sales in Spain.
These numbers are a crucial barometer of how well Android devices are selling in the market: Google typically talks activations but not actual sales of handsets.
Andy Rubin in June noted that Android device activations are now numbering at over 900,000 per day.
Dominic Sunnebo, consumer insights director at Kantar Worldpanel, puts the popularity of Android down to one crucial factor: a lot of people are migrating from feature phones and Android represents just the right nexus (sorry!) between price and functionality.
Kantar Worldpanels research shows that Android devices are particularly successful with people who spend $50 and under for devices (typically sold with subsidies from carriers when you buy the device under contract), in the vast majority of countries covered in its research.
The officially supported integrated development environment is Eclipse using the Android Development Tools Plugin, though developers may use any text editor to edit Java and XML files then use command line tools to create, build and debug Android applications as well as control attached Android devices (e.g.
Android handsets currently offer an easier platform to enable these consumers to upgrade, as many first time smartphone consumers state price of handset and multimedia capabilities as their main reason for choosing an Android device, he writes in the news release.
For example, in the UK, Worldpanel notes that the Samsung Galaxy Ace and Y are popular choices for young people who were previously using traditionally loyal in its words to RIMs Blackberry.
(Fun fact: the 20 year old au pair who lives with our house is precisely the young user Worldpanels talking about.
Well, iOS smartphones are still doing fine, and in markets like the US they are actually still gaining at the expense of Android.
Googles OS is still the biggest there, at 50.2 percent, but thats actually a decline of 6.8 percent compared to the same 12 week period last year.
IOSs share, meanwhile has grown by 8.7 percentage points to 37.4 percent of all sales in the market, fuelled partly by wider availability on Sprints network.
Another point worth noting is that Kantar Worldpanels figures also provide a rather stark picture of who is on the way down the counterbalance to who is going up.
RIM and Symbian saw declines in sales shares in just about every market listed below: the one exception is Symbian in the US, where the share of sales is so small just 0.5 percent but at least a rise of 0.3 percentage points compared to the same period a year ago.
Brielle Shreiber is a business journalist based in Munich, Germany. Brielle has a passion for financial markets and breaking news stories and loves writing about business news, stock market, and economic opinions that matters most to its audience. Brielle spends a lot of time discovering and researching latest financial markets and industry news stories in order to make sure the latest and greatest stories are brought to you first on BigBoardNews.com.
