iPhone 6 Sales Help Apple Hit New Highs In Mobile OS Battle

The continued success of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus helped push Apple back into a two-way battle for supremacy in the worldwide smartphone market, according to new figures from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech

The iOS developer saw significant gains in key markets across the world as it reaped the benefits of its new flagship devices, especially in China.

The Chinese New Year holiday saw iOS device sales soar 9.7 percent from the previous year to reach an all-time high in the country, capturing 27.6 percent of the smartphone market.

Onwards and upwards

Apple also enjoyed a major surge in the UK, where its share of the smartphone market rose 8.6 percent to 38.6 percent, although it still trails Android (52.6 percent) by some margin.

“In Great Britain, as Samsung prepared the channel for the arrival of the new flagships Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, sales of the Galaxy S5 grew slightly over the previous period and captured 8.7 percent of smartphone sales keeping this model as the second best-selling smartphone after the iPhone 6”, said Dominic Sunnebo, business unit director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech Europe.

The good news for Apple continued across Europe, where Android’s share declined by 2.9 percentage points year-on-year to 67.6 percent while iOS rose by 2.9 percentage points.

This included gains in Germany, France, Italy and Spain, but the company did see falls in both the US (-0.5 percent) and Japan (-5.1 percent), where Android devices reigned supreme.

“The new flagship products in the Android ecosystem by Samsung, HTC, LG and Huawei shipping from April across markets will inject a new spark in the ecosystem battle”, concluded Carolina Milanesi, chief of research at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.

“Differentiation will remain a challenge in an ecosystem where vendors share such an important common denominator – OS. Samsung’s clear departure from previous generation’s design will certainly help the Galaxy S6 and S6 Plus to stand out.”

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