Kantar: WP, Android grow but lose some momentum

Kantar has just released its statistics on the smartphone OS market share for the quarter ending in December. The report shows Android and Windows Phone expansions continue through 2013 with steady growth even though it might be losing its momentum. Meanwhile BlackBerry and iOS lose users in all key markets.

Smart OS share year-over-year comparison (December)

The 2013 year has been great for Windows Phone even though Nokia didn't make the breakthrough sales it was hoping for. Microsoft's OS increased its market share in all markets but Latin America. It saw big gain in the UK (from 5.9% to 11.3%), France (from 5% to 11.4%), Italy (from 12.7% to 17.1%) and Spain (from 1.2% to 5.6%).

The Windows Phone momentum is slowing though. Once we compare the the report for the one from November (Kantar uses rolling three-month averages) we can see the OS actually lost some share in France (from 12.9% to 11.4%), USA (from 4.7% to 4.3%), China (from 2.7% to 1.1%) and Australia (from 6.9% to 5.2%).

Android is still the most popular smart OS, winning at every key market and still growing everywhere. Its biggest success was in Latin America, where it increased its share from 62.6% in 2012 to 83.5% in 2013. Other noticeable YoY increase happened in Germany (from 69% to 75.4%), Italy (from 54.2% to 66.2%), and the EU (from 62.9% to 68.6%).

The Android OS has also lost some tiny bits in few markets compared to its November results - 0.7 percentage points in the UK, 1.5 percentage points in Italy, 1.1 percentage point in Spain, and 0.5 percentage point in the EU.

Apple's iOS has lost shares in all markets through 2013, the biggest one being in Italy (from 23.1% in 2012 it nearly halved to 12.8% in 2013). It also lost a significant amount of users in its homeland, USA, where it went from 49.7% in 2012 to 43.9% at the end of 2013.

Luckily for Apple, the December's holiday season was good, as the iDevices sales went up and the iOS has managed to increase its share over November in all markets but the UK (it lost 0.5 percentage points there).

Finally, BlackBerry's share is shrinking by the minute. It lost lots of users everywhere except for China, where it increased its share from none to 0.1%. Its biggest user decline was in Latin America from 10.3% in 2012 down to 2.8% by December 2013.

Smart OS share year-over-year comparison (November)

So, Android is still the dominant smart OS out there and it is rapidly increasing its lead. Windows Phone popularity is going up, but unless Microsoft comes up with something better this spring with the 8.1 update, it may have a hard time keeping its momentum. The iOS isn't threatened just yet, although it has long lost the market share war to Android, while BlackBerry seems doomed.

Source | Via