IDC released its second quarter report for worldwide smartphone shipments by operating system today and in it noted iOS and Android accounted for 96% of the global market. That number, however, comes only as Android grew on the strength of higher sales of low-cost devices abroad.
The dominant smartphone operating systems (OS), Android and iOS, saw their combined market share swell to 96.4% for the quarter, leaving little space for competitors. Android was the primary driver with its vendor partners shipping a total of 255.3 million Android-based smartphones in 2Q14, up 33.3% year over year. Meanwhile, iOS saw its market share decline despite posting 12.7% year-over-year shipment growth. While Android and iOS both realized gains from a year ago, the rest of the market recorded losses.
Of that 96%, the numbers show Android smartphones collectively grabbed 84.7% of the market with its 255.3 million units shipped, while Apple comes in at 11.7% of the market with 35.2 million units shipped during the quarter. That’s down from 13% last year despite growth in overall shipments for Apple and up from 79.6% last year for Android.
Perhaps most interesting in the report is that during the quarter that ended in June IDC says “58.6% of all Android smartphone shipments worldwide cost less than $200 off contract, making them very attractive compared to other devices.” Compare that to Apple (which dropped in marketshare while Android grew) with only 15.4% of its shipments in the $200-$400 mid-range category. The remainder of Android’s sales include 21.5% in the mid-range $200-$400 category and 19.82% in the high-end $400+ category:
IDC previously released its data for worldwide smartphone shipments for Q2 by OEM with Apple coming in with 11.9% of the market behind Samsung at 25.2%.
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At this rate iOS will be sub 10% market share next year. I don’t care if they are higher-end devices or not, that is going to have an impact on app developers.
More and more apps are free on the front end and make revenue from adds and micro-transactions, so even the most frugal of Android user will contribute to revenue. With market share of >90% that is going to become mighty attractive.
The is compounded by the fact that Android has fixed at least some of the update issues and that even cheep low-to-mid range phones are faster than the flagships from 2 years ago.
Crazy stuff….
No that’s not true. The reason why this is happening is because the iPhone 6 is going to be announced soon so people are holding off.
That is partially true, but this is not a one time event; every post I see about sales numbers (even when numbers are up for volume) market share is falling.
I am not saying that Apple needs to hang the for-sale sign, I am just saying that it is an alarming fact that they are continuing to lose market share.
These are Year over Year results. Last year “people were holding off” for the 5s and the year before that the 5, and the year before that…
Hopefully, the iPhone 6 will draw some people back who wanted a larger phone.
You may be correct. However, even if market share shrinks, the total iOS market will almost definitely increase (i.e. the number of iPhone owners will increase). So it is not like the market is going to dry up or even shrink.
Also, market share doesn’t matter as much as the # of dollars spent on apps. This is likely to still be in iOS’s favor even next year, and the total dollars for iOS is also likely to increase.
I do not see how Apple is going to be able to win market shares.
At the moment, Android phones ” midrange ” are no more BASICS. Huawei, Lenovo and the others, make very interesting products.
Sony also arrives in force with 2 average devices, Xperia M2 and Xperia T3 (But the US operators want not to lose the iPhones customers…NO SONY IN STORE, too dangerous !) just an example…..
I agree that both platforms are growing in numbers, Android faster than Apple, but both are still strong. I still think that app developers will be more interested in which platform brings a better return for the money. However, I think that many developers are releasing in both platforms.
The thing is that the people that buy iPhones are the market segment of the population that actually HAS and SPENDS money. Something the Android population has a tough time with. The app developers go where the money REALLY is. Plus as time goes on Apple has the lock on 64 Bit smartphones and ever year there will be a larger market of iOS users that will have 64 Bit processors so the iOS apps will get more high end. Judging from how Apple typically does their product refreshes, Apple should be selling only 64 Bit models after next year’s refresh and then it takes about 2 years for 90% of their install base to refresh to 64Bit. What does that mean? It means that Apple will transition completely over (including install base) to 64 Bit smartphones in about 3 1/2 more years. Developers can then devote only to supporting 64 Bit. Android? Good luck. They’ll be stuck in 32 Bit land for the next 8 to 10 years. They simply won’t be able to make any money with these sub-$200 off contract phones.
The other flip side is that this last quarter and the quarter we are presently in are typically slow for Apple as compared to December and March quarters. I think there is going to be a huge spike in iOS sales from Sept ’14 to March ’15.
The down side to that is the current iPhones 1gb ram isn’t enough to take advantage of the 64 bit processor
@calisparkz, Moving to 64 bit has less to do with addressing more memory and more to do with doubling the number and width of general purpose and floating point registers, supporting an expanded instruction set and being ready for future upgrades. Note that at boot of a 5s, all of iOS 7 and all first party apps are 64 bit code, not one piece of 32 bit code in there. Apple is getting a head start on the future and memory space is just a minor part of that.
I suggest reading http://www.anandtech.com/show/7335/the-iphone-5s-review and paying close attention to clock speeds, core numbers and performance benchmarks, not to mention the comparison between the A7 and the Bay Trail.
Never underestimate the benefits of a system where SoC, OS and hardware are designed by the same company. Anyone can slap generic parts together with a generic OS, but you’ll only see generic results.
Doesn’t matter shipments share.
Net usage is far more important for developers.
In web usage, shopping, music, apps and so on, IOS is far more stronger than Android.
Ios users use their device as an internet device seven times more than android users.
Lots of Android users use their device just as e feature phone.
That’s matter for developers.
I think that today typical Android enduser never buy any apps from Google Play and even not download a free apps. The reason behind is that you cannot buy today a phone device — all phone devices (almost) in the shop are smartphones! Millions of Android users use just a phone without messing with some apps download…
This is a similar trend to what happened with desktop PC market share. Windows eventually was able to get 90+ percent.
Yet the Mac and OS X still survived.
The same will be true for the iPhone.
* People who use iOS spend more money per person compared to Android. And that will attract developers.
Why are reporting anything IDC says as fact? They have a long history of just making sh*t up.
Cheap sells. That’s how Android got to where it is today. Developers still make twice as much money from iOS development than they do from Android.
Is a person who gets a phone in a “Buy One Get X Free” deal going to be likely to pay for apps?
Does anybody still believe numbers from IDC?
Here’s why I think Android numbers are inflated. There are several large OEM mfg that sell Android devices to others that private label their own name and I think these products are getting double reported.
That’s how I think it’s over inflated. I think that the mfg are not detailing what portion of their sales are OEM products that shouldn’t be counted twice, once by the OEM mfg and another time by the OEM private label company. Google is one example, they don’t make their phones, someone else does. Same goes with other private label brands.
Apple’s share keeps shrinking & shrinking. More low end good phones are about to take the market by storm eventually eating into that high end market that Apple loves.
Forget about Samsung when you have: Xiaomi, Blu, One Plus, Huawei, etc so many to name. Their are coming and they will take the low end, their won’t be a huge high end market.
Yet their sales and percentage of use are increasing… Because IDC’s numbers are historically wrong.
“Spin spin spin,” go the scared sheep.
IDC, people. They can’t even get their own phone number right. Is anyone actually listening to them anymore? Their acronym stands for “I Don’t Care”
Every other story it says IOS gains on Android, then Android gains on IOS. But these firms said Apple was losing sales of Macs to and it was totally bogus. So now I really don’t believe these anymore.
Welcome to the world of junk phones. Yup, android wants market share, not quality.
Smartphone makers who run Android do so for only one reason: they don’t have a choice. All of these Android share stats are meaningless. There’s no worldwide ‘Droid consortium where these companies pool their profits and plan a smartphone OS takeover. They’re all competitors. And they’re beginning to cannibalize one another. In fact, Samsung is already feeling the sting of Xiaomi’s crappy iClones. Apple doesn’t have a horse in this race. The 5s is still the largest selling smartphone on the planet. And a spectacular iPhone 6 is about to do some serious damage.