iOS Market Share Grows in United States During August, Falls in UK

Samsung hit a three-year high in UK smartphone market share in August, according to the latest Kantar data, but its very minor growth in the U.S. was outpaced by Apple.

The latest Kantar data shows that iOS saw year-on-year market share growth during August in seven of the nine major markets monitored by the firm.

Over the summer of 2017, iOS saw growth in the following territories compared to the same year-ago period: Spain (4.4 percentage point increase), followed by China (4.3), the United States (3.7), Germany (2.3), France (1.7), the European Union (1.2), Australia (0.9), and Italy (0.4).

Specifically, iOS grew from 31.3 to 35 percentage points year-over-year in the U.S., and although Android still dominates the U.S. smartphone OS market at 63.2 percentage points, it has dipped slightly from its hold of 66.1 percentage points in the same year-ago period.

Samsung took full advantage of the weeks just before the iPhone 8 and iPhone X were released in Great Britain, with significant promotional activity that helped drive its overall share to a three-year high of 38.4% for the three months ending August 2017,” explained Dominic Sunnebo, Global Business Unit Director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.

“More than one in four Galaxy S8 buyers cited a specific promotion as a key purchase influencer, and almost half said that a good deal on the price of the phone was key to their purchase,” Sunnebo continued. “Both of these metrics experienced a large increase over the last two months of the period.”

iOS market share is expected to see another boost thanks to the launch of the iPhone X, which has caused many people to put off ordering the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus. Pre-orders for the device go up two weeks from today on October 27, while the official launch date will come three weeks from today on November 3.

For more data on the global market shares of smartphone operating systems, take a look at Kantar Worldpanel’s research here.

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