Kantar Worldpanel has released a report revealing that Apple is the top smartphone brand for 2016 in the two major Western markets, the US and the UK. iOS demand is growing steadily in all markets except China.
On the other hand, Android demand increased in several countries but not in the US, UK and Australia despite having a larger ecosystem than iOS.
Samsung took first place in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, the five largest markets in Europe. Huawei followed in second place. Apple failed to take first place in China, which was taken by Huawei. In the US, iOS accounted for 44.4% of all smartphone sales in the fourth quarter of 2016, up 39.1% from the same quarter in 2015. Android accounted for 54% of all sales, down 4.7% from the previous quarter.
Despite the Galaxy Note 7 scandal, Samsung managed to maintain a market share of 28.5%, down 0.9% from the previous year. In the fourth quarter, the Galaxy S7 was the third best-selling smartphone, which does not seem to have affected Samsung's decision to delay the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S8.
In the UK, Android accounted for 50.6% of all smartphone sales compared to 47.6% for iOS. Essentially, Android declined slightly from 51.9% in the fourth quarter of 2015 while iOS achieved a 9% increase.
