Kantar Worldpanel published its most recent ComTech report on Monday, which details smartphone sales around the globe for the three months ended in July. The report still found that Android is crushing competitors on a global scale, particularly in China and Europe, but that Windows Phone saw really solid growth.
Kantar Worldpanel said Android had a 70 percent of all smartphone shipments in Europe and China during the quarter, which means Apple certainly has its work cut out for it if it plans to release the budget-friendly iPhone 5C there soon.
Meanwhile, Windows Phone represented 8.2 percent of sales across Europe. ""Android and Apple take the lion's share of the headlines and continue to dominate smartphone sales, so it's easy to forget that there is a third operating system emerging as a real adversary," Kantar Worldpanel strategic insight director Dominic Sunnebo said. In Britain, Germany, France and Mexico, the operating system has a 10-percent share, largely propelled by the success of the entry-level Lumia 520. Windows Phone is also now the second most popular operating system in Mexico. So what's causing the growth? Consumers upgrading from feature phones, instead of those moving from Android or iOS devices, Kantar explained.
The story in the U.S. is a bit different. iOS represented 43.4 percent of sales during the period. Kantar warns that Apple and Android may still see growth, and that can come in one of two ways: from feature phone upgrades or from consumers leaving one platform for the other.
