Apple’s agreement with T-Mobile USA has allowed it to resist against Android’s rapid growth in the US, according to Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. The market researcher estimates that Apple iOS had a 41.9 percent smartphone market share in the US in the three months to May, up 3.5 percentage points on the year-earlier period, while Android grew by only 0.1 points to 52 percent. Windows Phone added 0.9 points to reach 4.6 percent. Despite T-Mobile being the smallest of the US big four mobile carriers, it can give iOS further impetus as 28 percent of its customers plan to purchase an iPhone for their next upgrade, Sunnebo said.
Sales data from the five biggest European economies show that nearly half of all smartphones being sold are a Samsung, boosting Android’s market share to 70.4 percent, compared to 61.3 percent a year ago. In these markets, iOS has a 17.8 percent share of smartphone users and Windows 6.8 percent. Sony has become the 4th largest handset maker in the UK thanks to the Xperia Z, 38 percent of whose owners used to have a Samsung, usually the Galaxy S2. Samsung’s loyalty rate in the country is 59 percent, placing it second behind Apple with 79 percent. Kantar calculates that UK smartphone penetration reached a record 65 percent in May, with 85 percent of devices sold in the three-month period being smartphones.
Windows is showing its competitive capacity in emerging markets such as Mexico, where entry level smartphones like the Nokia Lumia 505 are selling well.
