Towards the end of last year, Apple finally gave its fans what they had yearned for for so long: big iPhones. The 5 inch iPhone 6 and the 5.5 inch iPhone 6 Plus have been big hits in all the markets that they have gone on sale. They were key contributors in Apple’s best ever quarter and boosted Apple’s overall earnings into the new year. New data from Kantar shows that a significant portion of that growth was driven by users of Android devices who made the switch to iOS.
32.4% of Apple’s new customers in Europe’s five biggest economies (Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain) were those who were coming from Google’s mobile ecosystem. This may be informed by several things. These may be previous iPhone users who had ditched Apple’s smartphone for those powered by Google’s Android mostly Samsung Galaxy smartphones simply because Apple did not have a larger smartphone to cater for their needs. Apple for long stuck with what it believed was the right smartphone size, a 3.5 inch display when competitors like Samsung unveiled ridiculously large smartphones like the 5.3 inch first generation Galaxy Note that were well received by the market. With Apple finally offering two large smartphones, wasn’t it time people went back home? Maybe it’s what they did.
Alongside the large iPhones, Apple also announced the Watch, its newest product category since the iPad back in 2010. The Apple Watch is a key factor since it only works with iPhones and is not compatible with other devices. So for anyone who wants to use Apple’s wearable device, they must get an iPhone.
While the new iPhones are a hit in the market, they account for just 18% of all iPhones in use in the US market where iOS is only second to Android in terms of marketshare. However, over 60% of iPhone users Stateside use the iPhone 5 or new models.
In all this, Android, Google’s mobile operating system, was the loser even though it gained 0.2 percentage points in the US in the first quarter of 2015 compared to a similar period in 2014 to have its marketshare stand at 58%. In Europe, it was downhill as Android registered a 3.1% drop to have its marketshare stand at 68.4%.
The interesting bit is that while those who switched from an Android phone to the iPhone were mostly influenced by recommendations from friends and family, those who bought an Android device were mainly influenced by the price, discounts and carrier subsidies.
