Android accounts for more than half of smartphone sales in U.S.

PanARMENIAN.Net - Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, a market analysis division of WPP, has published its latest figures on mobile device sales across a number of key markets, and it looks like something of a milestone for Android: this is the first time in ComTech’s recording of sales that Android has accounted for more than half of all smartphone sales in the U.S., the biggest markets in Europe, and Australia, TechCrunch reports.

The sales, recorded over the last 12 weeks that ended June 10, put Android sales in a range going from 49.6 percent of all smartphone sales in Italy to 84.1 percent of all smartphone sales in Spain.

These numbers are a crucial barometer of how well Android devices are selling in the market: Google typically talks activations but not actual sales of handsets. Andy Rubin in June noted that Android device activations are now numbering at over 900,000 per day.

They also underscore the competitive threat the Google represents to all other platform operators at the moment. The newer entrant, Microsoft’s Windows Phone is showing positive signs, in that its percentage of sales is growing in different markets, but it remains in the single digits, and will be hard-pressed to make inroads in the short term with Android device makers continuing to perform so well.

OS smartphones are still doing fine, and in markets like the U.S. they are actually still gaining at the expense of Android. Google’s OS is still the biggest there, at 50.2 percent, but that’s actually a decline of 6.8 percent compared to the same 12-week period last year. iOS’s share, meanwhile has grown by 8.7 percentage points to 37.4 percent of all sales in the market, fueled partly by wider availability on Sprint’s network. iOS was, in fact, the only platform whose sales grew over the period in the U.S., the report says.