The rise and rise of Android leaves iPhone iOS in the shade

It's official: Android now has a greater market share than iPhone across the EU5 countries of France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. According to newly published data from the comScore MobiLens service , nearly one in four smartphone users in the EU5 region were using smartphones running on a Google Android platform.

In the three months covered by the research, ending in July 2011, there were a total of 88.4 million smartphone users amongst mobile subscribers in the EU5 which represents a 44 percent increase from the year before. Of these, the undoubted winner was Android with an increase in market share from 16.2 percentage points to 22.3 percent. Indeed, Google's Android platform showed the fastest growth in market share of any of the smartphone platforms.

When it comes to the devices themselves, the clear winner was HTC which accounted for a staggering 34.6 percent of all Android smartphones across the EU5 region during this period. Samsung wasn't too far behind though, with an impressive 31.7 percent share. Talking in numbers of devices owned, the report reveals that there were some 19.7 million EU5 smartphone users adopting the Android platform, most of them in the UK where some 6.3 million were to be found.

Both Apple with it iOS and RIM with the BlackBerry platform could barely muster a single percentage point in terms of market share gains, which kind of puts the spectacular rise of the Android-powered smartphone into some perspective. It could be worse though, Apple and RIM could be Microsoft or Symbian; both of which saw their respective market shares fall or in the case of Symbian tumble would be a better description (-16.1 percent) despite the fact that it remains, for now, the market leader in Europe.

According to Jeremy Copp, comScore Europe vice president for Mobile, Google Android is driving the increasing popularity of smartphones, not Apple iOS nor the market leading Symbian platform. "Although Symbian continues to lead the EU5 smartphone market" Copp says "Android is gaining fast and recently passed Apple to become the second most popular platform. Network operators, publishers and advertisers looking to effectively reach the European mobile audience must pay close attention to the continued growth of Android in the region, as it will likely have far-reaching implications for the mobile media landscape".

[trévi]

I want to learn any language which is going to get me some apps on the web, so I don't care who is winning the race. However, which ever platform has the most users means the most potential clients.

What phones does Android run on?

[happygeek]

Android phones :)

[jwenting]

I'd say this "report" is overhyped.
The main reason Androis is seeing the seeming rise in popularity it does is because it's relatively new and the release cycle of Android phones is extremely rapid (and we all know that a lot of people want to be "kewl" and end up buying every new model released by their favourite brand, one more reason HTC is in front of Samsung as HTC tends to have more models and shorter release cycles than does Samsung, as well as being rooted more in the lower price market segment where Samsung is more prevalent in the corporate market where devices are replaced at a lower frequency than in the consumer market.

I think we can expect a similar rise in popularity of Windows phones were manufacturers to release consumer grade (and priced) phones based on the platform, accompanied by similar marketing campaigns as accompany the release of new Android based models.
Symbian IMO is indeed dead, or nearly so, as the number of available devices mounting the platform declines.
Blackberry (always centered in the highend corporate market) suffered hard from the bad press about their security policies after the censors in several countries got them to essentially turn their secure platform into an open one. This alone has caused many corporate customers (their main userbase) to reconsider their choices and in some cases switch to other suppliers.

Expect Apple to show up above Android in the next report right after the release of a new iPhone model.

[Tellalca]

Google always wins. iOS will never get above Android again.

[mshauny]

Well, if you look at the sales reports between 2010 and 2011 in South Africa you'll notice that Android OS is the leading phone O.S. So if you want to invest in anything rather go for Android because It might be here for a while and it covers Smartphones, Tablet PC's and other consumer products. I myself I'm a .NET developer and I started investing in JAVA recently because of it.

[ChrisHunter]

Expect Apple to show up above Android in the next report right after the release of a new iPhone model.

This will mainly be due to people wanting the brand to look "Kewl", it's not cheaper than android which is propably why android has boomed (due to the quick release of andriod by the likes of HTC which brings the price down), and it's not as open as andriod. Apple could sell crap to a farmer . . . which isnt necessarily a bad thing though but aslong as it's cheaper, lets you take photos, text, call and get free apps (angry birds) i'm sticking with an android.

I like smartphones cause I think they're user friendly. They don't lock 3rd party apps, are they? and there are also many android app developers.