Australian smartphone users still prefer Android over iOS with the gap widening

Customer research company, Kantar, has recently completed their study for the three-month period ending June 2021 and showed that in Australia Android is still king but iPhones are the most prevalent smartphone in hand.

Although everywhere you look you may well see iPhones it seems that iPhones are not the most popular smartphone in Australia. For the three month period up to the end of June 2021 Android continued to outpace iOS with its percentage of the market increasing 1.1% to 59.7% compared to the same time last year — iOS on the other hand dropped 0.9% YoY to 40.3%.

For iOS users iPhones made up three of the top five selling models with the iPhone 11 and iPhone 12 in first and second place with 6.3% and 4.7% respectively. The iPhone 12 Pro Max came in equal fourth. Samsung’s entry in the top five were the Galaxy A12 at 4.7% for third position and the Galaxy S21 equal fourth with 4% share. The large volume of iPhone 12 sales helped Apple to a handy 50% share of the 5G-enabled devices on the market. Samsung was not too far behind with 40% share.

Based on last year Samsung increased their share of the market from 30.7% to 34.8% from the same period last year. Another Android manufacturer who performed well included OPPO with a growth of their share up to 6.6% — In-store recommendation for the OPPO brand has shot up to 19.5% this quarter on the back of the mid-range A53 and A74 smartphones, driven primarily by JB Hi-Fi, where almost one in five smartphone purchases in this retailer are OPPO. Other brands such as Nokia and Google were stable at 3.7% and 2.3% respectively while Motorola showed a small increase in their share up to 2.2% of the market.

So while Android continues to lead the race for smartphone dominance in Australia the fact that two manufacturers make up nearly three quarters of the Australian market is very telling. We like what we like and “prefer to buy brands that I am familiar with” and that does not seem to be changing any time soon.

Change can sometimes be good though with brands other than these two often offering great value products. Next time you are due for a new smartphone why not have a look at a different manufacturer — who knows what you could be missing out on?