Market research firm Kantar has recently released its data from January 2013, and it shows Apple’s iPhone ascendant, but still a long way behind rival Android when it comes to smartphone operating systems in China’s smartphone market.
Specifically, Kantar says Apple hit 23.2 percent of China’s smartphone market in January, up from 18.6 percent in September 2012. But Android saw even more impressive growth, jumping from 65.2 percent of the market in September to 71.5 percent of it in January. The big losers, unsurprisingly, were everyone else. Symbian and Windows Phone both dropped (to 3.5 percent and 1.2 percent, respectively) and other OSes didn’t even register. Here’s a chart of what the market looks like now, according to Kantar:
And here’s a chart that compares the size of each company’s market share in China between September 2012 and January 2013:
Kantar’s report also says that smartphone penetration in China has reached 22 percent, so there is still an awful lot of room for position-shifting as the other four-fifths of the country begin the shift to smartphones.
(via Sina Tech, image source)
Apple’s jump from 18.6 to 23.2 is over two times faster growth than Android’s rise from 65.2 to 71.5.
@ John: That depends on how you want to measure growth, I suppose. If you’re talking about how much bigger Apple’s market share is getting in comparison to itself then yes. If you’re talking about how much bigger Apple’s market share is getting in comparison to how much bigger Android’s is getting overall, then no. I suppose I should have been clearer about what I meant.
What would be even more telling is if we had figures splitting across income groups. Since Android targets a broad swath of the market, vs. iOS which is limited by price to a higher income bracket, it’s not quite a fair comparison. Some figures I’ve seen tack Apple as several times more popular than Android in the 15KRMB + bracket.
Anyway the same stats can always be used to tell quite different stories (is it growing faster than it’s competitor? faster than the market? bigger in absolute or relative terms?). Always with a grain of salt but good to know nevertheless!