A fifth of European smartphones are iPhones

17th September, 2010 by adina
Tags: Apple, Europe, iPhone, Mobiles, Phones

According to comScore, a fifth of all smartphones sold in Europe now are iPhones. Apple’s share has almost doubled in one year and reached 19.2 percent in July, damaging especially Nokia’s share, which dropped spectacularly from 65.5 percent a year ago to only 51.2 percent now.

Nokia’s share has also been affected by Research in Motion, which climbed to eight percent. Samsung had only a small rise and reached 5.1 percent, while Sony Ericsson’s decision of mostly dropping Windows Mobile in favor of other operating systems like Android and Symbian has quadrupled its share, which is now 4.8 percent. Meanwhile, Motorola and LG were practically flat, with less than one percent each.

No matter the devices, Symbian was affected again and dropped from 68.6 percent to 54.4 percent, due to Nokia’s drop and to a larger move away from the aging operating system. Apple and Research in Motion share remained unchanged as they have their own platforms. Microsoft’s transition from Windows Mobile to Windows Phone 7 moved it to 11.6 percent, while Android’s developing has put it at 6.1 percent in Europe across all the firms supporting it.

Although analysts did not try to find out why Apple had the quickest growth of the whole group, a multi-carrier strategy for Europe may have the largest role. In the United States, the phone is limited to AT&T, but most European countries sell the iPhone at more than one carrier and in some cases cover all major carriers. For instance, by July almost all British carriers had access to the iPhone. Android’s performance in Europe has been relatively modest as it was missing the help of a fervent supporter like Verizon. Most Android phones are available only on some carriers in a certain country or are not available at all. The European price of the iPhone is more attractive than in the United States, as carriers are inclined to discount iPhones or give them away freely when accompanied by an expensive enough plan.

ComScore expects Nokia’s N8 to be the first in a series of new devices meant to give the company the chance to recover share. Researchers, however, were not eager to predict whether this event would happen or not. Nokia has lost share almost permanently since the iPhone appeared on the continent. It still has devices lagging in areas like speed and resolution compared to Apple’s iPhone 4. The decline contradicts Nokia’s claim of outselling Google and Apple. The Finnish firm has half the share in its best market, while Apple, research in Motion and Google are significantly stronger in other markets, not to mention North America.

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