Android has come from nowhere to become the
mobile OS powering just under half of all
smartphones sold in the UK – and half the
people owning a mobile phone in the UK have a smartphone. In the process it has
bested Nokia's Symbian (since declared dead, though still stumbling to its
grave), OS (which is fighting back) and
Apple's Iphone (which, given its comparatively high price until the latest cuts
to the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, was never likely to dominate long-term). It's an
amazing run for Android which is likely to carry on into 2012, since it's taken
four years to reach this point (longer if you count Nokia's, RIM's and
Microsoft's offerings from 2005/6 as smartphones) but the number of smartphones
being sold is accelerating . In last month november the Android OS garnered
market share of 46.9 percent, up 3.1 percentage points from the prior
three-month period.
SmartPhone TakeUp
The number of people using their mobiles to go
online was also higher in the UK with nearly half (46 per cent) of UK internet
users using their phones to go online in October 2011. This was higher than in
all the other countries surveyed. UK consumers were also more likely to play
games on their phone (34 per cent compared with 16 per cent in France). A
quarter (25 per cent) of UK mobile users accessed news content on their mobiles,
significantly higher than in other European countries. This could be partly due
to higher smartphone take-up and UK newspaper websites having mobile specific
websites. The report found 91.4 million people in the US owned smartphones
during the three months ending in November, up 8 percent from the preceding
three-month period, and 234 million Americans aged 13 and older used mobile
devices.
Samsung Domination
Samsung was confirmed as the largest player in
the smartphone marke which grew by 42.6% in the three months to the end of
September to reach 118.1m units - almost 25% bigger than the PC market
worldwide, But smartphone growth was slower than had been forecast, and
noticeably below the two-thirds growth of the second quarter, which IDC ascribes
to the delayed launch of Apples newest iPhone: in previous years new models
appeared during the third quarter and caused a spike in sales.