One in four European smartphone users now use devices running on the Google Android platform, just marginally ahead of the number of iPhone users. Symbian smartphones remain in the lead with one in every three smartphone users carrying a Symbian device.
In an analysis of the five leading European markets – France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK – HTC had the highest market share among mobile original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), accounting for 34.6pc of Android devices used across the region in this period, followed closely by Samsung with 31.7pc of Android devices.
“Smartphone adoption has seen significant growth from the previous year, driven in large part by the increasing popularity of the Google Android platform,” said Jeremy Copp, comScore Europe vice-president for Mobile.
“Although Symbian continues to lead the EU5 smartphone market, Android is gaining fast and recently passed Apple to become the second most-popular platform. Network operators, publishers and advertisers looking to effectively reach the European mobile audience must pay close attention to the continued growth of Android in the region, as it will likely have far-reaching implications for the mobile media landscape.”
HTC and Samsung own nearly two-thirds of Google Android device market
In the three-month average period ending in July 2011, 88.4m mobile subscribers across the EU5 reported using smartphones, up 44pc from the previous year. Google’s Android platform exhibited the fastest growth among smartphone platforms in this period, increasing its market share 16.2 percentage points to 22.3pc.
Android’s growth over the past year outpaced that of other top smartphone platforms by a significant margin, with the Apple iOS and RIM platforms each experiencing gains of only slightly more than one percentage point. Meanwhile, Symbian’s and Microsoft’s share of the smartphone platform market declined, with Symbian conceding a sizeable percentage of the market.
In July 2011, 19.7m EU5 smartphone users were using Android mobile devices, with the greatest number of users in the UK (6.3m), followed by France (4.5m) and Germany (4m). Across EU5, HTC owned the largest share of the Android device market at 34.6pc, followed closely by Samsung at 31.7pc.
A closer look at the individual EU5 countries shows HTC and Samsung leading in device share for various markets. In the UK, HTC accounted for more than 50pc of Android devices in use, a significantly higher percentage than other markets.
While Samsung had the second-largest share of Android devices in the UK, it accounted for less than half of HTC’s share (21.6pc). However, in all other EU5 markets, Samsung ranked as the leading Android device, with a 42.3pc market share in France and greater than 30pc market share in Spain, Germany and Italy.
