The early holiday sales numbers are in, and it’s a mixed bag for Android. Kantar Worldpanel ComTech has released their numbers for sales of three months ending in November 2016 and it seems that in the US at least, Android smartphones aren’t as popular anymore, as it is down 60.4% compared to the same period last year. But in China, it continued to dominate as local brands captured the world’s biggest market. It was still dominant in the EU5 but had a slight decline from the October period.
The bad news first in the US market: rival iOS had a pretty good early holiday sales streak so this means that Android marks its sixth year in decline during this sales period. The top three most popular smartphones in the period are all iPhones (iPhone 7, 7 Plus, and 6s) with Android coming in at 4th and 5th with the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge respectively. The good news is that Google’s new Pixel phone made strong gains in the three months included in the report, rising to 1.3% of sales.
Over in China, the local market continues to support local OEMs, with Android getting an 80% lions’ share of the market. But some of the brands’ shares also suffered a decline. Huawei had 25% of the sales but they’re down 3.1% from the 3-month period at the end of October. Oppo meanwhile had a strong growth and now has 12/9% of the market share. In fact, the Oppo R9 was the second best-selling device, next only to the iPhone 7.
In the EU5 market (Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain), Android had 72.4% of smartphone sales in that period but it was a 2.8% decline from the October period. Historically, Apple always does well during the holiday period, but the real battle is if it will continue to be strong or level out in the first quarter of 2017.
SOURCE: Kantar World Panel
