Skip to main content

Android dominates U.S. market, but iOS and Windows growing faster

iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry phones
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Android may be on top, but iOS and Windows Phone are growing faster. The same company that reported Android’s 50+ percent hold on China’s smartphone market, Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, announced today that, while the Google operating system is the leader in the United States, both the iOS and Windows platforms are growing at a faster rate. (Though not really that much faster that Google needs to lose much sleep over it.)

While Android has had a growth of about 1.4 percent above this time last year, iOS is up 2.3 percent, while Windows has grown 1.8 percent.

It’s interesting to see the difference in total numbers in the U.S. when compared to China, where affordable smartphones are in high demand. Whereas in China, the total number of iPhones in use is about half that of Android devices, the numbers are much closer here in the U.S. Android accounts for around 51.7 percent of smartphone sales – which is pretty spot on with its numbers in China – while iOS devices account for 41.4 percent, a far cry from the 19.9 percent in China. Windows trails far behind, making up just 5.6 percent of all sales.

The same study also took a look at carrier growth in the country. Verizon (naturally) remains the leader of the pack, growing 1.8 percent and now accounting for 36.3 percent of all smartphones. The slight boost can be attributed to the increase in Windows-enabled device sales. AT&T held its second place spot with 26.3 percent, the same as last year. Thanks to its acquisition of iOS devices, Sprint ousted T-Mobile to grab the third place spot (13.1 percent) and the latter dropped to fourth place, with just 11.3 percent.

Editors' Recommendations

Joshua Pramis
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Spending a childhood engrossed in such technologically inspiring television shows like Voltron, Small Wonder, and Power…
iOS 18 could make my iPhone look like Android, and I hate it
The Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max and the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra's rear panels.

If rumors are to be believed, iOS 18 will allow you to customize the home screen on your iPhone more substantially than ever before. This feature will be familiar to Android phone owners, but I don’t want my iPhone to look like an Android phone.

It’s a weird double-edged sword, as by giving you more freedom to make the home screen look unique, iOS may also lose what makes it unique compared to the less constrained world of Android.
iOS 18 and your iPhone home screen

Read more
How to change your iPhone’s notification sound in iOS 17
how to change iphone default notification sound ios 17 sounds screenshot

Apple made a change to the default notification sound when it launched iOS 17, replacing “Tri-tone” with “Rebound.”Users have been unable to switch back to the original sound or select a different one as the default, and not everyone is a fan of the new tune. As you'd imagine, that's left some folks rather annoyed.

Read more
How to reverse image search on Android or iPhone

A reverse image search is a handy way to figure out the origin of an image, locate similar images, or fact check an image. There are a multitude of ways to perform a reverse image search on your mobile device, whether you're using an Android phone or an iPhone.

For example, here's how to do a reverse image search via Google lens on Android:

Read more