A report by the Guardian states that Android smartphone sales in the UK have tripled since the beginning of the year. Now one in 10 handsets sold in the United Kingdom is running Android, and contract market share has grown by 10.2 percentage points since the first quarter.
The HTC Desire and HTC Legend remain the most popular handsets in the UK, but Samsung has recently released the Galaxy S, which will present another attractive option for customers. HTC's Wildfire also presents an attractive smartphone at a lower price, which will bring consumers into the market who can't afford the high-end phones.
These are pretty staggering numbers, but most impressive is the Android name gaining traction:
"The figures suggest an increasing number of consumers are now asking for Android handsets by name," said GfK analyst Megan Baldock. "Operating systems are no longer simply a by-product but a key selling point in their own right."
Apple has done an amazing job marketing the iPhone to be synonymous with a smartphone. However, Android has done a remarkable job in a short time of branding itself and it will only continue to grow. [The Guardian]
13 Comments
Woot woot go android go.
Take over the world.
I knew it. Its just a great OS.
Not too surprised at this as the HTC Desire created a real buzz in the UK which seemed to get a few people's attention. Good foundation from which to grow and hopefully manufacturers will be more likely to back the UK market with quality product launches moving forward. Would be interesting to see how well things are progressing across other European markets.
I can merely talk for the German cell phone market (since I live there) but here Android phones are still very hard to get. We not only have mostly different naming schemes for the same devices and naturally lack all phones using CDMA, but Droid X and most Galaxy X versions are not even available by any carrier or as retail.
Don't get me wrong, the interest in these devices is tremendous and I'd say there is even more of a tendency of consumers to know the specs of their hardware than over at your end of the ocean. Fact is though, German Motorola and Samsung websites don't even show any info about the smartphones discussed at AndroidCentral.
HTC is more up to date on this matter.
I wonder, what I have to do to get a nice 4.3" in Germany and where would my updates come from?
Motorola have not released anything in the UK yet either. As for all the Samsung variants on American carriers they are all carrier adjustments to the Global GSM phone Samsung Galaxy S (except the one with the slide out keyboard which is not yet launched). The Samsung Galaxy S is now available in the UK and I would not be too surprised if a slide out keyboard version followed shortly.
To be honest I am really interested to see what the next generation lineup will be like towards the end of the year and how they stack up to the new Windows Phone 7 lineup, which will feature phones from many of the same manufacturers.
All handset contracts grew by only 1%.
ALL Smartphones market share grew from 55% to 66.7%
This says to me that Smartphones are rapidly killing off the feature phones, at about 11% market share per quarter. In 3 for 4 quarters the feature phone will be dead.
Whether Android is making inroads against the other smartphones or merely cannibalizing the feature phone market is not clear from these numbers.
Too big to be ignored in any case.
That means people want the phones with the bigger Gee Bees :p
And theWyFys.
Not to be too pedantic but if sales are up by 300% then they have actually quadrupled, not tripled...so even better news :)
Bye Bye Apple, hopefully that asshole Steve Jobs chokes on a fat one.
I don't think it is 'Good-bye Apply'...rather it is Good-bye RIM. If they don't go away altogether then their market share will shrink miserably from where it is now. Apple will be OK and Google will be OK but for RIM with their BlackBerry's, it is hard to see how they can withstand the onslaught.
actually its goodbye Nokia, everyone here who doesnt have a iphone has a nokia and all the rim phones are business phones and as such are issued by workplaces.