iOS vs. Android vs. Windows Phone Market Share in China: BlackBerry, Microsoft Fail to Increase Market Share as Google Climbs, Says Kantar

Google's smartphone operating system continued to grow in China while all other rivals failed to increase their market share figures based on a data.

According to Kantar Worldpanel, Google's Android smartphone operating system improved its market share in China by 4.9 percentage points during the three months ending in November 2013 from the same period in 2012.

Android finished November 2013 with 78.6 percent of the Chinese smartphone operating system market share, which is up from the 73.7 percent from November 2012.

Apple's iOS comfortably secured its second place rank despite being 61.6 percentage points behind Android.

iOS accounted for 17 percent of the market share, which is a drop of 1.5 percentage points from the three months ending in November 2012. The Apple smartphone platform had accounted for 18.5 percent in 2012.

BlackBerry and Microsoft's Windows Phone failed to register an increase or decrease of their respective market share percentages.

Windows Phone maintained third place. The mixed news for the Microsoft mobile platform is Windows Phone saw a percentage change of 0 percentage points. Windows Phone upheld the same market share percentage as the three months ending in November 2012 again by the end of November 2013 at 2.7 percent.

BlackBerry also saw a percentage change of 0 percent. BlackBerry, however, had also accounted for 0 percent of the smartphone operating system market share during the three months ending in November 2012 and the same period ending in November 2013.

"You don't have to conquer China and the US to win in the smartphone market, but you do need success in one of them," said Kantar Worldpanel ComTech's Strategic Insight Director Dominic Sunnebo. "At the moment there are few signs of progress in either country for Windows Phone and momentum needs to be made soon before OS loyalty severely limits the available market."

According to Sunnebo, China is likely to be the easier market for Windows Phone.

"After all, Nokia has a huge existing presence in the market, retains strong customer preference and can sell handsets at the right price to capture the huge numbers of people with relatively modest budgets," Sunnebo added. "However, with Microsoft soon running the show it's hard to imagine a change in strategic direction away from the U.S."

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