Google's mobile platform now in front of Apple's iOS in EU5

Sep 13, 2011 20:41 GMT  ·  By

Slowly but surely, Google's Android mobile operating system is gaining more market share all around the world, and it has already come to the second place in the top five European markets, the latest data from comScore shows.

In the five leading European markets (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom), Nokia's Symbian OS is still a leader, accounting for no less than 37.8 percent of the market, while Android managed to secure the second place, with 22.3 percent market share in July 2011.

It might not seem all that impressive, but, when taking into consideration the fact that Android was present only on 6 percent of the smartphones in July last year, and that it is now the second platform on the market, things get a different perspective.

Other platforms out there did not do as well at all. Symbian, for example, although a leader on the market, dropped from 53.9 percent market share in July last year, while Microsoft's Windows platform went down from 11.5 percent share a year ago to 6.7 percent in July this year.

Apple's iOS gained some more share on the market, now being loaded on 20.3 percent of smartphones, up from 19 percent last year, while RIM's BlackBerry OS went from 8 percent share to 9.4 percent.

“In July 2011, nearly 1 in 4 smartphone users in EU5 reported using smartphones running on the Google Android platform,” comScore explains.

“HTC had the highest market share among mobile original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), accounting for 34.6 percent of Android devices used across the region in this period, followed closely by Samsung with 31.7 percent of Android devices.”

88.4 million mobile subscribers in the aforementioned five European countries owned a smartphone in the three-month period ended July 2011, the research firm notes. This marks an increase of 44 percent when compared to the same period a year ago.

Google’s Android platform enjoyed the fastest growth on the smartphone area, increasing its share by no less than 16.2 percentage points to 22.3 percent, the research firm explained.

“Android’s growth over the past year outpaced that of other top smartphone platforms by a significant margin, with the Apple iOS and RIM platforms each experiencing gains of only slightly more than one percentage point,” comScore notes.

“Meanwhile, Symbian’s and Microsoft’s share of the smartphone platform market declined, with Symbian conceding a sizeable percentage of the market.”

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Android now second OS in EU5 market
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