While grappling with an ongoing antitrust case in Europe over its online search business, Google extends its power and reach in the mobile industry.
Although the figures that comes out may not help Google's case very much. The analysts say that in the last three months, Google-powered smartphones, running Android, accounted for more than 70 percent of sales in the region's five biggest markets of U.K., Germany, France, Italy and Spain.
And globally, the Android trend is continuing to consolidate its leadership position in smartphones. And the secondary story here is that much of this success is being led by Samsung, which now accounts for nearly half of all smartphones sold.
Although smartphone penetration is slowing down in developed markets, the global Android's rise doesn't seem to fall: 70.4 percent of sales is nearly 10 percentage points higher than it was in 2012 (61.3 percent in the three months that ended May 31, 2012). In March 2013 it was 64 percent; and with Android’s share rising in every market over the last few months, that will mean that this 64 percent share will be approaching 70 percent soon.
A similar story is seen in China, which is now the world's biggest market for smartphones. In China, Android has basically won the market, with over 70 percent of all sales of smartphone devices accounted for by Google's platform.
Whether these are all official Android builds, or whether accounts for forked devices, which will not work with Google’s wider ecosystem of products like its app store, billing services, and advertising. Ironically, the fact is that such strong local players, producing smartphones catering for the Chinese audience, means that in any case Samsung does not dominate in China in the same way that it does for the rest of the global Android (and smartphone) landscape.
Samsung in Europe, in the UK, for example, which now has a smartphone penetration of 65 percent, the Xperia Z smartphone from Sony is putting in a strong performance, with 38 percent of Xperia purchasers being former Samsung owners, "the majority of whom have upgraded from the Galaxy S2," writes Paul Moore, global director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.
Samsung has the second-highest loyalty rate in Britain after Apple (59 percent vs. 79 percent). One of Apple’s key factors is its strength across different consumer electronic hardware, specifically PCs - something highlighted in some research across sales of the whole category of IT devices.
In the U.S., Android is also pulling itself ahead of the competion, now accounting for more than half of all smartphone sales at 52 percent (compare that to 49.3 percent at the end of March 2013). With Apple’s relatively new relationship with T-Mobile, Apple is having an extra boost, providing a counterbalance against Google's Android. The iOS sales grew by 3.5 percentage points, the most of any platform. Apple’s platform in all took 41.9 percent of sales in the U.S.
"Across Europe, Android growth remains strong. However, in the U.S. Apple’s expanded distribution agreement with T-Mobile is helping the iPhone keep Android growth at bay. T-Mobile is the smallest of the big four U.S. carriers but it does have the capacity to give iOS a boost, particularly as 28 percent of its customers plan to buy an iPhone when they next upgrade," said Moore.
On the other hand, BlackBerry lost nearly 4 percentage points and is now down to just 0.7 percent of sales in the last three months. Its new push with BB10 is not giving it the sales bump it needs right now in the mobile OS competition in 2013.
In a market where it used to be the smartphone leader, BlackBerry is currently selling almost as few as Symbian, a platform that been discontinued by Nokia. Microsoft with its Windows Phone 8, meanwhile, is respectably rising although a little compared to the big two - up 0.9 percentage points to 4.6 percent.