Kantar: Android grows in Europe thanks to the debacle of Windows Phone

Kantar has just published the analysis on the smartphone market with statistics up to the quarter ended in late March. The first fact worthy of mention regards the strong growth of Android terminals in the EU5 (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK). The market share of devices equipped with Google's mobile operating system has increased by 7.1% over the same period of 2015, reaching 75.6% share. This is the highest growth recorded in the last two years in the EU5.

The reasons for the important milestone achieved by Android devices are linked to the debacle of the Windows Phone operating system, which, in recent months, had found in the European market one of the most fertile land to spread. Market share substantially half that held by the OS of Microsoft's mobile in the same period last year: from 9.9% to 4.9%. Windows Phone smartphones were slowly able to make room in the market for low-cost terminals, a segment in which certainly does not lack alternatives based on Google's mobile operating system.

The increase in sales in the EU5, said Kantar, is generalized: "the growth is not just one or two players, but the brand and different ecosystems, which vary from region to region." The analyst firm has no doubts in identifying the item that generated the new trend in sales growth of Android terminals, "almost 7% (6.6%) of new Android customers are from Windows (Phone), compared to 3 , 3% and coming from iOS ". Apple's iDevice, although decreasing in the EU5 (-2.5%) maintain a stable share with 18.9% 35.3% market share.

The defeat of Windows Phone is more evident in the countries where historically has been more spread out, as explained Dominic Sunnebo, business unit director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech Europe:

In Italy and France, once the Windows Phone market more solid, almost 10% of Windows Mobile users have moved to Android in the quarter ended March. They also opted for brands such as Huawei, Wiko and Asus, with mid-range good-value devices

Expanding the scope of observation up to and including non-European markets, there has been further growth in sales of Android devices in the US, driven by new high-end proposals, starting with the Samsung Galaxy S7, which, despite the recent marketing , it proved to be the fifth most purchased smartphone in. To do well in the US market are also LG and Motorola that has managed to gain 9.8% market share (6.9% in the same period last year). In the States, most recently, it is more marked contraction of the share of iOS devices that have lost 4.9% over the same quarter last year.

China is another important market for smartphone manufacturers and is the area where iOS records the loss of more substantial market share (-5% compared with the same quarter of 2015), while Android continues to consolidate the situation of domination of the market by increasing by a further 5.9% of the market share. Windows Phone, unlike what happened in Europe, has never managed to pose a significant attention of the Chinese audience; market shares remain low, as they were a year ago (1.3% in the first quarter 2015, 0.8% in the first quarter 2016).