Symbian remains top mobile OS in Europe, as Android beats iOS
The mobile market researchers from comScore just released their report on smartphone market in the top 5 EU countries for the three months ending in July 2011. According to the study, which covers UK, Germany, France, Spain and Italy, Symbian is still the most popular platform on the old continent, but Android has jumped up to second and is getting ready to take the lead.
Currently Symbian is powering 37.8% of the smartphones in Europe, with Google's OS running on 22.3% of them. iOS has slipped a place down and now sits in third position with a market share of 20.3%, whereas BlackBerry and Windows complete the top 5 platforms holding 9.4% and 6.7% of the market, respectively.
Comparing the numbers to those for the same period of last year we see that Google is the fastest growing OS, gaining the impressive 16.2 percent points, while Symbian's share has shrunk by about the same margin. iOS and BlackBerry are the other two platforms on the rise, but they only improved by 1.2 and 1.5 percent points, respectively.
Still, this was enough for BlackBerry to overtake Microsoft and keep its 4th overall position despite the rapid ascent of Android. We are somewhat skeptical that RIM will be able to maintain that position, when Nokia enters the WP7 game, though.
| Top Smartphone Platforms in EU5 by Share of Smartphone Users* 3 Month Average Ending July 2011 vs. July 2010 Total EU5 (DE, FR, IT, ES and UK) Mobile Subscribers, Age 13+ | |||
| Smartphone Platform | Share (%) of EU5 Smartphone Users | ||
| Jul-10 | Jul-11 | Point Change | |
| Total Smartphone Users | 100.00% | 100.0% | 0.0 |
| Symbian | 53.9% | 37.8% | -16.1 |
| 6.0% | 22.3% | 16.2 | |
| Apple | 19.0% | 20.3% | 1.2 |
| RIM | 8.0% | 9.4% | 1.5 |
| Microsoft | 11.5% | 6.7% | -4.8 |
comScore also did a research on the distribution of sales within the Android platform and found that HTC are currently the leaders there with 34.6%, closely followed by Samsung with 31.7%. In fact Samsung are beating HTC in four of the five markets polled, but the Taiwanese company holds a huge advantage in the UK (where smartphone adoption is traditionally high).
| Top Mobile OEMs for the Google Android Platform in EU5 3 Month Average Ending July 2011 Total EU5 (DE, FR, IT, ES and UK) Mobile Subscribers, Age 13+ | ||||||
| OEM | Share (%) of Android Users | |||||
| EU5 | UK | France | Germany | Italy | Spain | |
| Total Android Users | 100.0% | 100.0% | 100.0% | 100.0% | 100.0% | 100.0% |
| HTC | 34.6% | 50.9% | 21.8% | 29.8% | 24.8% | 31.9% |
| Samsung | 31.7% | 21.6% | 42.3% | 32.4% | 35.6% | 33.9% |
| Sony Ericsson | 15.1% | 14.2% | 17.4% | 14.6% | 8.3% | 18.8% |
| LG | 5.8% | 3.5% | 7.8% | 6.8% | 10.1% | 3.4% |
| Motorola | 3.6% | 2.1% | 3.0% | 7.8% | 2.4% | 2.8% |
Sony Ericsson comes third in the Android-only ranking with 15.1%, while LG and Motorola have relatively small chunks of the Android market - 5.8% and 3.6, respectively.