In the last three months, the share of iPhone sales in the smartphone market has doubled. The reason for the growth was the release of the iPhone 4S. Despite this, the market situation has hardly changed: Android is still in the lead. In addition, smartphones are displacing mobile phones from the market.
Apple and Google have divided the American mobile platform market. Nielsen analysts came to such an unexpected conclusion after another study. They found out that over the past three months, the share of iPhone sales has almost doubled: from 25% in October to 44.5% in December. In turn, sales of solutions on the Android platform fell by a third: from 61.6% to 46.9% over the same period.
The growth driver for Apple was the release of the iPhone 4S. According to Nielsen, among those who chose to buy an Apple background in the last months of 2011, 57% purchased the iPhone 4S. By the way, the relatively low pre–October figures are not evidence of a drop in interest in Steve Jobs’ company, but on the contrary, an indicator of extreme interest. Before the announcement and release of the iPhone 4S, no one wanted to rush into buying an Apple device.
Be that as it may, the overall market situation has changed little. Smartphones based on Google’s OS still dominate: their market share is 46.3% against Apple’s 30%. Although in the context of the last three months, the situation looks a little different. Among those who bought their smartphones recently, the share of iOS adherents is a little more than a solid 37%, Android has even more of them – 51.7%. BlackBerry, which is rapidly losing its position in the mobile market, provided space for companies to “maneuver”.
Nielsen experts also found out that the popularity of smartphones in the United States is growing. According to the results of the fourth quarter of 2011, 46% of all mobile devices present on the market are smartphones. Moreover, over the past three months, 60% of buyers have preferred them to conventional devices.