London – The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus boosted Apple’s smartphone share a lot around the world but only a little in the U.S., although Apple’s share in the U.S. was already among the highest of any country in the world, Kantar Worldpanel ComTech found in its global consumer survey.
For the three months ending October, including almost two months of iPhone 6/6 Plus sales, Apple’s share of U.S. smartphone sales to end users grew by 0.7 percentage points over the year-ago period to 41.5 percent. In contrast, Apple’s share rose 5.9 points to 20.7 percent in the five largest European markets, which are Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. Share was up 5.4 points to 40.4 percent in Australia,
In China, share rose only by 0.2 percentage points to 15.7 percent because the new iPhones went on sale only on Oct. 17. Despite the end-of-quarter entry, the iPhone 6 nonetheless became the third best-selling device in October, Kantar said. In China, local brand Xiaomi continues to dominate the market, and its Xiaomi RedMi Note phablet was the top-selling smartphone in October. Xiaomi’s market share in China came in at 29.9 percent during the three-month period.
Back in the U.S., Verizon (42.2 percent) and AT&T (41.4 percent) took an almost equal share of iPhone 6 sales, but AT&T led in sales of bigger screen iPhone 6 Plus phones with a 63 percent share. The iPhone 6 outsold the iPhone 6 Plus by a 3:1 ratio overall. Buyers of the 6 Plus tend to be older than iPhone 6 buyers, Kantar said.
Overall, various iPhone models accounted for four out of the five best-selling models in the U.S. during the three-month period.
“Apple has experienced a huge jump in sales share across almost all major markets thanks to the launch of the iPhone 6,” said Dominic Sunnebo, Kantar’s strategic insight director. Apple’s success was particularly evident in Great Britain, where Apple’s sales share rose 10.4 percentage points to 39.5 percent, Apple’s highest share even in that country. “ Most of these sales were driven by loyal Apple users,” said Sunnebo. “Some 86 percent of British buyers upgraded from an older iPhone model, [but] only 5 percent switched across from Samsung.”
Apple’s share in Germany grew 3.1 points to 16.9 percent in Germany, 3.7 points in France to 19.6 percent, 3.4 points in Italy to 13.5 percent, and 2.3 points in Spain to 6.8 percent.
In Japan, Apple’s share fell 13.1 points to 48 percent.
