The top three Android phone makers lost ground in the US – Kantar

Research firm Kantar released some of its findings covering the three months ending April 30, and it’s a mixed bag for Android. On one hand, the combined market share of Android manufacturers decreased in the United States. On the other, Android extended its lead in Europe and urban China.

In the US, the three top Android manufacturers – Samsung, LG, and Motorola – all lost market share year on year.

This decline should come as no surprise, given that both Samsung and LG had a pretty bad 2016 and that the sample period (February to April) was right at the end of their flagship cycle. Samsung infamously recalled the Note 7, leaving the Galaxy S7 as the main sales engine. Meanwhile, LG reeled after the failure of the G5. Sales of Galaxy S8/S8 Plus and the LG G6 begin around mid-April in the US, so they weren’t enough to buoy Samsung’s and LG’s numbers.

Lenovo/Motorola is in a somehow similar situation – the Moto Z lineup is about to be replaced after a less than stellar performance in the market. The weakness of the leading Android OEMs in the US enabled Apple to increase its share in the country to 36.5 percent, up 5.8 percentage points from a year before.

Overseas, Android fared better: In Europe’s top markets, the total share of Google’s OS hit 78.3 percent, a 2.2 percentage point increase year on year.

More worrying for Apple, Android also did well in urban regions of China, which make up the most dynamic phone market in the world. Here, iOS devices saw a 3.8 percentage point drop from the same time last year, down to 16.2 percent. Virtually everything else went to Android.

So what does this mean? Despite Google’s and its partners’ best efforts, Apple is still entrenched in the United States. While we expect Android to bounce back a few percentage points in the next report, Apple seems to have a solid grip at the 40 percent mark. It’s a different deal in the rest of the world – Android continues to dominate Europe, it owns India, and it looks like Apple’s days of growth in China are over, at least for now.