Android OS loses 8% market share in 5 years: Report

SAN FRANCISCO: Tech giant Google's Android has lost 8 per cent of its global OS market share in five years, however, still at least 70 per cent phones run on the Android OS, says a new report

According to StockApps, 7 out of 10 phones run on the Android OS, while two of the remaining three are most likely to be iOS powered.

Occasionally, one out of those three will be using one of the other less known OS'. However, Android's dominance is coming under increasing pressure from the other players if we go by market data, the report said.

StockApps said it has provided data showing Android's global dominance of the OS space has been ebbing gradually. Its worldwide market share in January 2022 stood at 69.74 per cent. In contrast, the OS commanded a market share of 77.32 per cent, its highest ever, in July 2018. Thus it has ceded 7.58 per cent of its holding in the last five years.

Available data shows that the OS' dominance is geographic.

For instance, 84 per cent of all smartphones in Africa are android-based. iOS accounts for roughly 14 per cent of the continent's devices, while Samsung, Nokia, and KaiOS share the remaining two percent or so.

A similar situation obtains in Europe, where Android OS has a market share of 69.32 per cent. iOS registers better prospects here than it does in Africa, as it runs 30 per cent of all the phones here. Again Samsung, Nokia and other developers have to contend with a miserly one per cent of the market.

The Asian and South American continents have Android dominating at 81 and 90 per cent, respectively. iOS share here is 18 per cent in Asia and 10 per cent in South America. Other OS developers share less than one per cent of the phone market on both continents.