iOS Market Share Drops During Q3 2013
A new report released by Strategy Analytics, says that global smartphone shipments reached 251 million units during this year’s third quarter and Google’s mobile operating system, Android, accounts for an 81.3% share of the global market. Apple’s share of the global smartphone market dropped with 2.2% from the same period last year and so did BlackBerry’s share of the market, with 3.3% from the third quarter of 2012. However, thanks to its Windows Phone, Microsoft doubled its share of the global smartphone market from the same period last year, becoming the fastest growing smartphone platform.
According to the Strategy Analytics’ report, “Android’s domination of global smartphone shipments reached a new peak in Q3 2013, with four out of every five smartphones now running Google’s OS [...] Android’s gain came mainly at the expense of BlackBerry, which saw its global smartphone share dip from 4 percent to 1 percent in the past year due to a weak lineup of BB10 devices”. The report also suggests that the reason behind Android’s increasing market share and Apple’s loss of ground is Apple’s poor efforts to appeal to consumers from emergent markets, that want (and can only afford) low budget smartphones. However, Strategy Analytics also says that Android will have to work hard to continue its growth since Apple is expected to recover a lot of ground during this year’s fourth quarter thanks to the release of the iPhone 5S which proved to be very popular among consumers, especially the gold model.
Regarding Microsoft, it shipped over 10 million smartphones globally during this year’s third quarter, a record for the company as it never shipped this many smartphones in a single quarter before. As we mentioned, Microsoft doubled its worldwide share in the smartphone market from 2% last year to 4% this year. The company also increased its smartphone shipments by 178% per year, reaching the 10.2 million mark.
According to the report, “Microsoft’s growth is almost entirely due to Nokia and its steadily improving Lumia portfolio across Europe, Asia, and the United States”. While this is very good news for Microsoft, the company still only has a very low global market share and it still has a lot of catching up to do in order to get to the level of the other big companies; to do that it has to penetrate a few important markets such as Japan, Africa and South Korea.
The global smartphone shipments also grew by 45.5% year on year, from 172.8 million units shipped during last year’s third quarter to 251.4 million units shipped during this year’s third quarter. Strategy Analytics hints the growth has behind it strong demand for Microsoft and Android smartphones in both established and emergent markets, such as Asia and Europe.
