iPhone Sees Ongoing Yearly Marketshare Decline As Apple Battles “Resurgent” Rivals, Says Kantar

Following the release of its latest pair of flagship smartphones, the iPhone 5s and the iPhone 5c, Apple is growing its share of smartphone sales, month on month, according to the latest figures out from Kantar Worldpanel. However despite its flashy new flagships giving it a short-term boost, Apple’s marketshare is continuing to be eroded year-on-year by smartphone rivals using the Android and Windows Phone platforms, the data suggests.

Apple’s new iDevices went on sale towards the end of September, with the two models racking up sales of nine million between them, over the launch weekend. Kantar’s smartphone sales data for the three months to November 2013 give Apple a 69.1% share of the Japanese market; 43.1% in the U.S.; 35.0% in Australia; and 30.6% in the U.K.

But despite Apple’s new models helping it improve its own marketshare performance in recent months — and the new models yielding high levels of satisfaction among iPhone buyers — Kantar says Cupertino is facing a tougher time to make year on year marketshare gains, owing to “resurgent” performances from rivals such as LG, Sony and Nokia.

While Android is generally continuing to increase its share in the majority of measured markets, Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform appears to be responsible for some of iOS’ dips in Europe, where the platform made year-on-year gains of up to 8.7 percentage points. Across five big European markets (U.K., France, Italy, Germany and Spain) Windows Phone had a 10% marketshare, in the three months to November, up 5.3 percentage points.

Meanwhile Kantar records some sizeable declines for Apple’s year on year marketshare performance — down close to 10 percentage points in the U.S. market, for instance. (Windows Phone made only marginal gains in the U.S., rising 2.1 percentage points to take a 4.7% marketshare).

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Apple has also seen a sizeable decline in Italy, where it’s dropped 9.1 percentage points in marketshare comparing November 2012 to November 2013. While across the EUR5 iOS is down 6.5 percentage points.

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Like Windows Phone, Google’s Android platform also grew its share in Europe — up 7.6 percentage points to take a 69.1% marketshare. Android also strengthened its hold on the U.S. market with a rise of eight percentage points, to take a 50.3% marketshare.

Despite making some progress in Europe, Kantar notes that Windows Phone continues to struggle to crack the U.S. or China — with just a 2.7% share in the latter market.

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Commenting on the data in a statement, Dominic Sunnebo, strategic insight director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, said: “You don’t have to conquer China and the U.S. to win in the smartphone market, but you do need success in one of them. At the moment there are few signs of progress in either country for Windows Phone and momentum needs to be made soon before OS loyalty severely limits the available market.”