iPhone and Android Duopoly Nears Peak With Estimated 99.9% Market Share Last Year

[zarmanto]

Does Gartner also consider resale or previously owned devices? More resilient iPhones may have longer second lives as hand me downs which can increase its marketshare beyond what is reflected in initial sales numbers.

True; some have argued that the "deployed market-share" can be illustrated adequately enough by looking at web usage market-shares. TLDR: iOS does indeed get a roughly 5% bump on the worldwide statistics, to ~19%-20%. It's mildly interesting, however, that iOS vs Android in the US market in particular is virtually neck-and-neck.

 

[78Bandit]

Windows Phone was a good OS. Microsoft was just hit with a one-two punch in that it made major, incompatible redesigns between WP7 and WP8 that pissed developers off and also had to charge a licensing fee to monetize it. I seem to remember the fee was something like $60 per device, which when you are talking about a majority of smart phones back in the 2012 time period selling for under $400 was a sizable percentage. No wonder manufacturers went with the "free" Android instead, that was an additional $60 directly into the manufactures pockets.

If MS would have jumped into the mobile market full-force in 2008 I think they could have given Apple a run for their money. By the time they had a decent partnership with Nokia and released flagship quality phones in 2012 with the 920 and 1020 it was too late. Apple had five years' head start and had firmly established themselves as the high-end manufacturer with an entrenched user base and an extensive developer network.

 

[BlargKing]

You're right in that it doesn't have to be a pissing contest and personal preference is king. You're 100% wrong about being forced into Android if you want a dirt cheap phone. You can get a dirt cheap iPhone and it doesn't have to be used. Boost Mobile always has iPhones on sale. As for Android, there are choices ranging from dirt cheap to flagship with multiple price points and levels of quality in between. Metal bodies, dual cameras, and a host of other features are readily available for as little as $250.

There is some variability in pricing and availability region to region too. Where I live, if you want an iPhone your either buying it new from Apple or a carrier, or buying it used from a pawn shop. There isn't much in the way of a cheap new iPhone here.

And, (at least here), theres quite a price gap between a decent mid-level Android phone and a new iPhone. I could buy my current phone outright for less than the cost of an iPhone X on a 3 year plan.

 

[KeepCalmPeople]

The Galaxy Note 8 (S8+?) really does look SO much more sleek than the iPhone X, even with the top and bottom bezels.

 

[Winter Charm]

What is the profit percentage? Does Apple still make the majority of profits in the smartphone business?

Yes. Apple took home over 50% of smartphone market profits with the iPhone X alone.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

Just think what Apple’s market share might be if their phones were $50 to $100 cheaper...

Honestly, $50, $100 bucks isn't going to stop a person looking to buy a top tier phone anymore than $2000 stops anyone from buying built-in GPS on a $50K car. Apple products have never been pure value buys. I have not bought or delayed an Apple purchase because the features were not there. But never because it was $50 or $100 too much. IF price is a problem I just wait a month and someone usually has it discounted.

Also iOS being just 14% and still a very robust developer market, largely because for the most part iOS 8, 9, 10, 11 is the same on the latest iPhone as the oldest supported. Performance will vary but it still works. That's not true of Android where updates are dependent on the handset maker.

 

[tooltalk]

Android has 85% and iOS has 15% -- that's Android monopoly, not duopoly.

 

[Dan Holmstock]

Windows Phone was a good OS. Microsoft was just hit with a one-two punch in that it made major, incompatible redesigns between WP7 and WP8 that pissed developers off and also had to charge a licensing fee to monetize it. I seem to remember the fee was something like $60 per device, which when you are talking about a majority of smart phones back in the 2012 time period selling for under $400 was a sizable percentage. No wonder manufacturers went with the "free" Android instead, that was an additional $60 directly into the manufactures pockets.

If MS would have jumped into the mobile market full-force in 2008 I think they could have given Apple a run for their money. By the time they had a decent partnership with Nokia and released flagship quality phones in 2012 with the 920 and 1020 it was too late. Apple had five years' head start and had firmly established themselves as the high-end manufacturer with an entrenched user base and an extensive developer network.

I think added to this is the fact its lack of getting GOOGLE apps, the third party stuff was junk, IOS came out strong because it had many of Google Services backed in. The feuding that Microsoft has with Google and the fact that Microsoft was making more off Android in Lic fees than its own phone had such an internal conflict of interest, that the Mobile from Microsoft never had a chance to grow. It would have been a gamble to make peace with Google to get Google to write native apps. Had this happened, Microsoft could have had a better footing. I used WinPhone7 and 8.1 and it was NOT bad really, but the lack of Google support in the apps had me leave them entirely.

 

[hypertoast]

​

Android remains more widely adopted than iOS by a significant margin, with a roughly 86-14 percent split between the respective operating systems last year. Android's dominance is unsurprising given the software is installed on dozens of different smartphone models offered at a range of price points, whereas the iPhone primarily caters to the high-end market.
Year

So even others are pointing to the fact that Android is for chepos vs Apple is only for the elite...

 

[Apple_Robert]

Not surprised by the numbers. More and more people are learning how nice a well-integrated OS can be with Apple.

 

[WarHeadz]

"More resilient iPhones"? Did you see the news about the iPhone 6 (and later) battery debacle?Resilient phones keep working past 18 months.

You know you can take an iPhone into any third party shop and get that battery swapped for like $40 right? Not a big deal.

 

[Frankfurt]

85% Android - more like a Google Monopoly

 

[KdParker]

Too bad for windows phone. I really hoped it would succeed.

 

[WarHeadz]

Too bad for windows phone. I really hoped it would succeed.

Last month I used my Windows Phone for a whole day while my iPhone X was at Apple being repaired. It was hell on earth, absolutely dreadful OS. I bought it as a backup phone 3 years ago at Walmart for $50. For a crappy little phone, it served as a great GPS so I'll give it that.

 

[JGIGS]

For a phone to be resold it has to first be sold. You reselling it 10 times doesn't increase the number of them in existence.

Plus Apple only makes money on the first sale so resale is totally irrelevant.

 

[riverfreak]

There’s still a dark horse in the mobile OS race: Hooli Phone.

 

[jdoll021]

Just think what Apple’s market share might be if their phones were $50 to $100 cheaper...

Maybe, but you have to remember that Apple makes most of its money from hardware sales. Google makes most of their money from content sales and ad revenue and presumably the AndroidOS hardware companies (Samsung et al.) get some of that back to supplement the less revenue they get from their hardware sales. IIRC, Amazon sells their Kindle Fire devices at practically cost and relies primarily on content sales for their revenue.

Don't get me wrong, I think Apple could stand to lower their profit margins a bit for their customers and to get more sales, particularly when they're sitting on more than $200 billion in cash. However, that's not Apple's playbook and I don't foresee that changing anytime soon, if at all.

 

[Ffosse]

Hooli what?

 

[BladeRunner95]

It's going to be almost impossible for anyone to break into this market as Apple/Google will just buy them out as soon as they gain traction. A Linux mobile open source OS is the only hope really, but I'm aware Ubuntu tried this and it didn't get anywhere.

This is the problem with capitalism, as soon as giant companies become so dominant it's almost impossible for real competition to ever get a foothold (not just thinking Apple/Google here, but also Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft etc)

 

[wigby]

"More resilient iPhones"? Did you see the news about the iPhone 6 (and later) battery debacle?Resilient phones keep working past 18 months.

You do know that the vast majority of older iPhones suffer from no battery problems at all, right? It was a small, bad batch of batteries that initiated the whole battery throttling issue to begin with.

 

[Abazigal]

Without a sizable market share developers will suffer and without developers and apps the ecosystem is dead.

In theory.

In practice, Apple’s 15% market share is still a very large number of users in an absolute sense. More than enough to sustain its own thriving ecosystem. I see no shortage of app developers releasing new apps for ios first or exclusively.

 

[wigby]

Congratulations Apple!

#2-6 in Computers
#2 in Phones

Beaten by Microsoft and Google.

But congrats to Tim Cook. How else would we have Animojis?
Winning like Charlie Sheen!

When has Apple ever been #1 in marketshare? The Apple 2 in the early 80s? You can blame Tim Cook all you want but Apple under Jobs has always been about sacrificing marketshare for control and profits.

 

[Abazigal]

Yes. Apple took home over 50% of smartphone market profits with the iPhone X alone.

That’s revenue. Profits is likely much higher. We know that android barely makes any money for its OEMs baring Samsung and maybe 1 or 2 other companies.

 

[firewood]

iOS market share is shrinking => hello?

Doesn't matter at all if Apple's total market share is shrinking... as long as their profitable unit sales number (units, not the percentage) is holding up or increasing. The customers who buy profitable devices also send more revenues to developers, thus create more and better apps, as well as better fund Apple's future R&D and marketing. The previous 90%+ market shares of PalmOS plus PocketPC/WindowsMobile and Brew didn't help at all when app developers started fleeing to the far more profitable iOS App store.

 

[Eric5h5]