Comscore: Google Snatches Second Place Spot From Apple in Europe, HTC and Samsung are King Amongst Android OEMs
Comscore recently published results for smartphone market share in Europe (EU5 countries Italy, Germany, France, Spain and UK) and Google has a lot to celebrate the world over. They’ve taken the number two spot from Apple in the three month period ending July 2011. Google climbed from the lowly depths of 6% of the share in the same period last year to 22% of the share this year, just enough to pass Apple.
Even with that, Apple grew (but only by very little). They held 19% of the share last year and now have about 20%. The constant in Europe has been Symbian, but it’s seen a major, major drop in share over the past year. It’s gone from owning 54% to 38% in just a year. They’ve been on a downward spiral in many parts of the world, now being almost nonexistent in North America (particularly the United States).
As expected, RIM and Microsoft round out the bottom of the pool, though the latter actually saw a slight climb from 8% to 9.4%. Microsoft’s story isn’t as promising, however, as they went from 11.5% to 6.7%. They’re hopeful Mango with another wave of devices will help them rise out of this hole but it will be tough to knock down those ahead of them.
In OEM news, HTC and Samsung seem to be the most popular Android smartphones out there with Sony Ericsson making good on their goal to become the top vendor. Motorola’s still stuck at the bottom with LG. Motorola has gained a rather sour reputation in that part of the world, mainly due slow or nonexistent firmware upgrades and buggy devices. LG’s problems simply stem from lack of inspiring innovation in a sea full of heavy hitters coming from Samsung and HTC almost on a monthly basis.
