Despite their best efforts, Android phone makers are struggling to achieve growth in the United States. According to the latest data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, Android’s market share in the US fell 5.9 percentage points from 67.6% in 2016 to 61.7% in the same three-month period ending in April of 2017. Over the same stretch, iOS sales in the US grew 5.8 percentage points to capture 36.5% of the market.
“Android partner brands Samsung, LG, and Moto experienced year-on-year declines in the US,” reports Kantar’s Lauren Guenveur. “The Samsung Galaxy S8, released in the last two weeks of the April period did not show a significant impact on Samsung’s sales in the period ending in April, nor did LG’s G6. Neither of those made the list of Top 10 best-selling phones.”
As well-received as they were by critics, the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus have failed to make a significant impact on the US smartphone market. In fact, Guenveur says that for the three-month period ending in May 2017, the S8 and S8 Plus reached a combined share of 8.1% of sales in the US. In the same period of time, the S7 and S7 Edge achieved 8.8% of sales and the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus took 20.1%.
The script was flipped in China, where Android sales have increased from 79.1% to 83.4% year-over-year and iOS sales have dipped from 20% to 16.2%. Still, that’s a marked improvement for Apple over the first quarter smartphone sales in China, which represented a paltry 12.4% of the market.
While Apple still has work to do in China, it appears to be unstoppable in the US.
