The mobile industry remains the two-horse race and the race still continues. Market share is just a number game. Watching Apple’s iOS 8 to be one of the flattest and most successful operating system in their mobile history, we have Apple with their new iOS 8 that is available on over 72% devices. The number is over nine percent higher if compared to the last statistics from December.
Despite Apple sold a record number of iPhones over the holiday season, Android still standing high and continues to be a dominant player in global smartphone operating system market share. Obviously it is due to the combined efforts of all other smart phone manufacturers in the market as they still choose to adapt the Android OS.
Android provides low cost services and the user interface still remains attractive to not only the hardware and mobile manufacturing companies but operators, mobile outsourcing companies and above all our worldwide consumers. But then not all consumers want cheap or reasonable phone.
There is fair percentage of consumers out there who wants higher-quality products and Apple offers that. Apple has healthy market share in a few rich countries. To the iPhone developing company, declining market share is merely superficial as long as the profits keep flowing. With iPhone 6 we have Apple that competes the market where the consumer demands the bigger screen phone. Hence Apple’s sales were boosted that helped give it a leg up in China.
With a platform like Android which is getting crowded day by day with hundreds of hardware brands and falling prices of the Android smartphone devices, it has started emerging as a challenge for Google and its dominance might not continue. It results in very few vendors making a profit out of it that too for a very short period of time.
As Android is distributed over various measures like OS versions across the devices, number of competing brands and varied number of user experiences, it ends up competing against one another. Whereas Apple being unified platform and a single distinct brand, stands against many others.
Combining the share it is revealed that Android and iOS captured 96% global market share in the last quarter. Where Android accounted 83.6%, iOS reached out till 12.3% of the global market share. Apple is doing a profitable business across Europe and the United States where Android shows a decline in the share. Apple also got some more good news in China where its share increased from 19 percent to 21.5 percent.
Apple doesn’t need to “rattle” Android to win. Despite the melodramatic need to put them against each other – we have to understand that in reality they are targeted at different type of people. The highest-selling device does not make it the best device in the world. Both platforms have room for improvement. Though Android is winning the download race of its app or selling its devices but Apple is the one making money.
