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Android Dominates Nearly 80% of Smartphone Market, iOS Drops to 13% Share

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Apple's iOS is losing ground to Android when it comes to smartphone operating system market share, according to a new report from research firm IDC. Apple's share of worldwide smartphone shipments dropped to 13.2% during the second quarter of 2013, while Android climbed to 79.3%.

During the same quarter last year, Apple held 16.6% of the market, while Android held 69.1%. Despite its slight loss of share, iOS remains the number two operating system, with Android and iOS combined making up 92.5% of shipments.
"The iOS decline in the second quarter aligns with the cyclicality of iPhone," says Ramon Llamas, Research Manager with IDC's Mobile Phone team. "Without a new product launch since the debut of the iPhone 5 nearly a year ago, Apple's market share was vulnerable to product launches from the competition. But with a new iPhone and revamped iOS coming out later this year, Apple is well-positioned to re-capture market share."
Click to expand...
idcosq22013.jpg
Worldwide Smartphone Shipments in 2Q13 in Millions of Units (Source: IDC)​
Windows Phone continues to gain market share as well, coming in at 3.7% during the second quarter of 2013, up 77.6% from its 3.1% share during Q2 2012.

Other operating systems are consistently losing ground to the top three operating systems with BlackBerry OS representing 2.9% of shipments, Linux at 0.8%, and Symbian at 0.2%.

Last week, IDC released its estimates on worldwide mobile phone sales, showing slowing growth for Apple's iPhone. Apple shipped 31.2 million iPhones during the second quarter of 2013, representing 13.1% of the market. Samsung shipped 72.4 million, for a market share of 30.4%.

Those numbers may shift in the coming quarters as Apple gears up to launch its next generation iPhone and a new low-cost iPhone, possibly as early as September.

Article Link: Android Dominates Nearly 80% of Smartphone Market, iOS Drops to 13% Share
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2013/08/07/android-dominates-nearly-80-of-smartphone-market-ios-drops-to-13-share/
Hard to see that trend reversing, even with a new iPhone.

give up now, BlackBerry.
 
Feel bad for Blackberry, lumbering dinosaur has turned into a lumbering woodchuck.

Windows growing is rather surprising, seems to be gathering traction now.
 
The problem is that the market grew by 50% YOY and Apple only grabbed 6.5% of those new customers.
 
Eek

I was part of that. I've had an iPhone since the day it first came out, every model. I got so bored with it I sold it an got an HTC One. Once the iPhone 6 comes out I might go back, but we'll see about that :p. This isn't bashing Apple at all, it was just what I did.
 
No real surprise here. Google is sorta in the position with mobile devices that Microsoft was with PCs. It looks like Apple will then occupy the same position that they did with PCs. As long as they can maintain the profit margin, they do pretty well as a niche player.
 
Competition...

Competition is healthy for everyone. Not only the consumer: also the producers. It keeps everyone on top of their game. And it serves as many different types of consumers as possible.

Remember The Beach Boys vs The Beatles in the late sixties? Not to compare Android to either of those bands (!), but the competition spurred both to greater and greater heights of innovation -- and brought immeasurable happiness for those who bought their records.
 
Open versus closed system. It's Windows / V.s Mac OS all over again.

That said, Apple has learned how to Be profitable having only a segment of the overall market, and will likely be fine as long as it doesn't start to alienate too many of their current users.
 
Honestly, I'm not sure iOS7 is going to help them reverse the trend.

They're going to need to drop their hardware prices.
 
I just don't understand these reports. One day iOS as 70% of iOS and next day Android and why do we care what is Android's market share. I love my iOS and iOS 7 looks really cool!
 
Apple keeps putting their head in the sand. The numbers show it IS happening, no matter how special you think apple is.
 
Apple will never grab any significant market share, but they will get significant proportion of all significantly rich customers, same goes for macs and ipad.
 
This is an off-quarter, everyone knows that. Wait to fall.
I trust the actual usage numbers anyway as Samsung is know to lie on numbers.
 
chrmjenkins said:
The problem is that the market grew by 50% YOY and Apple only grabbed 6.5% of those new customers.
Click to expand...

No, the difference is Apple make a great profit. The majority of the "smartphone" with Android are barely able to run the OS because it needs crazy fast hardware to run smooth. They are also cheaply built and are effectively throwaways...
 
Even though they are not hugely significant gains, I am pleased to see Microsoft beginning to offer some competition within the market place. It is better for everyone if there is more competition.
 
Last edited:
Popeye206 said:
Again.... we're talking shipments here... not sales... don't know how many of those new shipments are sitting dead on shelves???
Click to expand...

I'd be willing to venture it's the same mix as last year, so you can likely treat the number as pure growth in sales and shipments.

Risco said:
No, the difference is Apple make a great profit. The majority of the "smartphone" with Android are barely able to run the OS because it needs crazy fast hardware to run smooth. They are also cheaply built and are effectively throwaways...
Click to expand...

Your comment isn't even relevant to what I said. I wasn't making any comment on the merits of either platform. I was simply pointing out that the YOY growth of the market is huge and android grabbed most of it. Apple's YOY growth was paltry in comparison. They didn't fail to retain customers (platform wars yay!!!), they simply failed to gain new ones as fast.
 
chrmjenkins said:
The problem is that the market grew by 50% YOY and Apple only grabbed 6.5% of those new customers.
Click to expand...

Seriously?! That's really, really bad. Where have you heard this?

As for the article, I'm not surprised and I've believed for a few years that Apple will drop very low in the smartphone share which will then start to impact on their other product sales. I'm someone, like many apparently, who has dropped iOS for Android and hasn't looked back.

I think we'll start to see Android OS appearing in products other than phones and tablets (cars, home automation, fridges, sat navs etc.) and a desktop OS (I think Chrome OS is Google's beta). At the moment, the choice for most is Windows or Apple - not much of a choice in my opinion.
 
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