The Apple iPhone has a long way to go before it’s the most popular phone around the world, but if these latest reports are anything to go by, the phone is gaining in popularity in some pretty key markets — like, for example, urban parts of China.
According to a report from Kantar Worldpanel, the iPhone 7 was the top-selling phone in the first quarter of the year in most of the regions that the agency tracks, including the United States, Europe, and more. In the top five European markets, Apple climbed up a nice 2.4 percent in market share, now sitting at 22.7 percent of the market — a market that also has many much less expensive phones on offer. Android also posted a pretty hefty market share increase in almost all markets except the U.S., showing that more and more people are adopting the smartphone.
The report focuses on in interesting point: Android and iOS are growing in market share, and as such are pushing out other operating systems, like Windows Phone. In many markets Windows Phone has less than a 1 percent market share, and in the U.S. the operating system sits at 1.3 percent market share — down from the 2.6 percent market share it had at the start of 2016.
One of the most popular markets for Apple is actually Australia — and in the country Apple sits at a hefty 42.4 percent market share, which is slightly higher than its market share in the U.S. Neither of those two countries are Apple’s best market, though. That prize is reserved for Japan, where Apple holds a whopping 49.5 percent of the market.
When it comes to China, Apple’s market share fell by 8.4 percent, according to the report. That figure, however, includes a large number of phones being sold in more rural areas, where many users are buying phones for the first time. That said, in “urban China,” which refers to China’s major cities, the iPhone 7 continued to be the top-selling smartphone.
The report continues on to talk about two “reborn” smartphone brands in Nokia and BlackBerry — but it notes that while those two companies made a splash in the market due to their retro styling, “no other ecosystem is challenging the two giants — iOS and Android.”
Then there’s the money aspect, and Apple is no slouch in that area either — in fact, the company collects the majority of profits in the market, and the report notes that it collected as much as 5.4 times the profits of Samsung.
