The statistic shows share of smartphone shipments worldwide by operating system from 2009 to 2017. In 2017, 85.9 percent of all smartphones sold had Android as its operating system.

Smartphone operating systems market - additional information

The operating system, also known as an OS, transmits user commands to all other programs and applications. It also controls the peripheral devices, such as printers or cameras. A mobile OS operates on hand-held devices, such as mobile phones, smartphones, tablets or smart watches. While OS themselves are usually available for free and are already installed on the device, the additional programs and apps are tailored specifically for each system.

As of 2014, the main players on the smartphone OS market are Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS. Other smartphone operating systems on the market include Microsoft’s Windows Phone and Blackberry’s RIM to a lesser extent. Symbian, which was used extensively on mobile phones and early generations of smartphones by leading manufacturers, such as Samsung, LG, Motorola and most notably Nokia, was a dominant player on the market in 2009 and 2010. Due to the growing popularity of Android, which most major smartphone manufacturers adopted as their OS of choice, and Nokia’s partnership with Windows Phone, which began in 2011, Symbian was effectively pushed off the market in 2014.

Google’s Android leads the global market with an 80 percent market share, while Apple’s iOS is second, with 15 percent. There are stark differences between regional markets; in the United States for example, the market is almost equally divided between Android and iOS.

The predominance of Android smartphones over iOS in Spain is indisputable: from 2013 to June 2024 the Google-developed operating system held over 75 percent of the total market share. Apple’s iOS market share peaked in April 2023 with 23.6 percent of the total share. This trend can vary significantly across countries – the popularity of iOS devices in the United Kingdom, for instance, was greater than that of Android for a long while, although the Google system has gained widespread acceptance among the British population in recent years.

Between 2017 and 2024, Android has been the leading mobile operating system in Italy, followed by Apple. In the fourth quarter of 2024, Android occupied around 68 percent of the Italian mobile OS market.

Android maintained its position as the leading mobile operating system worldwide in the first quarter of 2025 with a market share of about 71.88 percent. Android's closest rival, Apple's iOS, had a market share of approximately 27.65 percent during the same period. The leading mobile operating systems Both unveiled in 2007, Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS have evolved through incremental updates introducing new features and capabilities. The latest version of iOS, iOS 18, was released in September 2024, while the most recent Android iteration, Android 15, was made available in September 2023. A key difference between the two systems concerns hardware - iOS is only available on Apple devices, whereas Android ships with devices from a range of manufacturers such as Samsung, Google and OnePlus. In addition, Apple has had far greater success in bringing its users up to date. As of February 2024, 66 percent of iOS users had iOS 17 installed, while in the same month only 13 percent of Android users ran the latest version. The rise of the smartphone From around 2010, the touchscreen smartphone revolution had a major impact on sales of basic feature phones, as the sales of smartphones increased from 139 million units in 2008 to 1.39 billion units in 2023. In 2020, smartphone sales decreased to 1.38 billion units due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Apple, Samsung, and lately also Xiaomi, were the big winners in this shift towards smartphones, with BlackBerry and Nokia among those unable to capitalize.

Between 2017 and 2024, Android has been the leading mobile operating system in Italy, followed by Apple. In the fourth quarter of 2024, the American tech giant held over 30 percent of the mobile OS market in the country.

An estimated 2.06 million smart phones were shipped in the second quarter of 2017 in Australia, with Apple as the most successful single manufacturer with a 37 percent share of the market. In the same year, Samsung were the second most successful with a 34 percent market share.

Smartphone operating systems in Australia

Apple’s own smartphone operating system, iOS, had a market share of around 44 percent in Australia as of December 2018. By comparison, Google’s Android operating system had an over 55 percent market share. Other mobile operating systems, for example Blackberry and Windows, had less than one percent market share.

Smartphone owners

In 2018, 96 percent of individuals in Australia aged between 25 and 34 owned a smartphone, as did 95 percent of those between 12 and 24. The penetration rate of smartphones has increased year on year since 2012, from less than half of the population to just over 65 percent as of 2016. This upward trend is expected to continue, reaching around 75 percent in 2022.

In the first quarter of 2023, Android held a market share worth nearly 79 percent of the mobile market in Colombia, followed by iOS, with just under 21 percent. No other operating system held a share larger than one percent.

iPhone sales made up approximately 55.6 percent of Apple’s total revenue in the first quarter of the company’s fiscal year 2025. iPhone sales usually contribute to half or more than half of Apple’s overall sales revenue. Apple’s other businesses such as the Apple Watch and the iTunes Store have been bringing in growing shares of revenues, from around five percent in 2017 to a combined almost 30 percent in the first quarter of FY 2025. Apple is the second largest smartphone vendor As Apple’s most successful product, the iPhone is one of the most heavyweight players in the smartphone market, with dozens of millions of iPhones being shipped every quarter. Indeed, when it comes to smartphone vendor share, Apple is the second largest smartphone vendor in the world, after Samsung. iPhone runs the iOS system, which is Apple’s inhouse operating system. Most other products on the market run the Android system developed by Google. iOS occupies around a quarter of the overall mobile operating system market, Android the rest. The differences between iOS and Android iOS is a closed system while Android is more open, which means that users can better customize their phones using the Android system. Because of its open nature, Android is also an easier target for hackers, whereas iOS is considered safer as Apple does not release its source code to developers and users. Both operating systems get regularly updated – Android 13 is Android’s 13th major release, and iOS 17 is the 17th major iOS release. Due to the great many models of Android phone devices, the Android versions are more fragmented than iOS, with older versions like Marshmallow and Lollipop still running on a big number of devices, whereas iOS 17, released in 2023, runs on around 66 percent of all Apple devices when looking at iOS version share.

As of July 2024, Apple’s iPhone 15 was the most popular smartphone model sold in the United States, accounting for over 17.5 percent of total smartphone sales. The iPhone was the most popular smartphone in the United States at that time, occupying four spots in the top five. Apple and Samsung: two leading competitors Apple and Samsung are the leading smartphone vendors in the United States with a combined market share of almost 80 percent in the second quarter of 2023. The two smartphone vendors dominate the U.S. smartphone market not only in terms of sales, but also when it comes to customer satisfaction: Samsung’s Galaxy line and the Apple iPhones are the highest ranked smartphone models on the American customer satisfaction index. In line with their successes in the United States, Apple and Samsung also lead the global smartphone market, albeit to a lesser degree – the two brands have a combined market share of close to 40 percent. Smartphone penetration the highest in the United States Smartphone sales value in the United States more than doubled in the last decade, making the U.S. one of the major smartphone markets globally. In 2024, over 118 million smartphones were forecast to be sold, with the number of U.S. smartphone users forecast expected to grow in the coming years.

Android was the unquestioned leader of the mobile operating system (mobile OS) market in 2018, with 88 percent of all devices sold running the Android system.

Mobile OS ecosystem

Smartphone operating systems, often referred to as smartphone OS, are operating systems that operate smartphones, PDAs, tablets and other mobile devices. An operating system allows these devices to run applications and programs, therefore, bringing advanced functions to mobile devices that were previously restricted to desktop computers.

The now-discontinued OS Symbian was the first popular smartphone operating system in the world. With the launch of Ericsson‘s R380 in 2000, Symbian became the first modern mobile OS on a smartphone. By 2009, Symbian accounted for nearly half of the global smartphone operating systems market, while RIM/Blackberry, also a pioneer in this market, held around 20 percent of the share. Despite the early start, both Symbian and RIM have been almost driven out of the market as new operating systems were released. Apple introduced its first iPhone model to the consumer market in 2007, revolutionizing the market. Prior to the launch of Apple’s iPhone in 2007, smartphones were a rather niche product and had not yet attained mass appeal.

As of 2020, Apple's iPhone held the third largest smartphone market share. Since 2011, Apple’s iOS market share has varied between 14 and 21 percent.

This forecast shows the number of smartphone users in France from 2018 to 2024. For 2020, the number of smartphone users in France is estimated to reach 47.18 million, with the number of smartphone users worldwide forecast to exceed 2 billion users by that time. From 2018 to 2024 the number of smartphone users in France is expected to grow by close to four million users. This equates to a growth in the share of users by 26.26 percent. The data was calculated in July 2018 and covers all individuals of any age who own one or more smartphones and use at least one of those devices every month.

The leading operating system on the the French market is Android with a 75.6 percent market share followed by Apple's iOS with a 18.8 percent share. Most individuals without a smartphone still owned a regular mobile phone and only 7 percent of the population did not own either. The most common smartphone owned in January 2017 was the Apple iPhone 7 followed by the iPhone 7 Plus. The three most common activities carried out weekly with a smartphone were the use of search engines, checking email accounts, and visiting social networks.

Global Anti Malware for Mobile Devices Market is Segmented by Operating System (Android and iOS), and Geography (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacifici, and Latin America). The market sizes and forecasts are provided in terms of value (USD million) for all the above segments.

As of May 2025, Apple accounted for around ** percent of the smartphone market in Hong Kong. This is a considerable decrease compared to the same period last year.Apple in the smartphone market in Hong Kong Apple has been the smartphone market leader in Hong Kong for years, maintaining a market share of well over ** percent. Whenever new iPhone models were launched, there was almost always a boost in sales. For example, iPhone XR’s launch was the reason for Apple’s peak market share at ** percent in November 2018. This is particularly interesting in comparison to the neighboring Chinese market, which was led by multiple Chinese smartphone manufacturers like Huawei, Oppo and Vivo. Back in 2014, Apple held a market share of roughly the same as Xiaomi, and higher than any other Chinese counterparts. Demographics of smartphone users Hong Kong’s smartphone penetration rate was among one of the highest in the world at ** percent in 2023. Generally, almost everyone aged 15 to 44 years old in Hong Kong has a smartphone, with the smartphone ownership for women slightly higher than males. Around **** percent of people in Hong Kong who owned smartphone sometimes owned two or more smartphones.

This statistic shows the market share held by the leading smartphone operating systems in Mexico from 2013 to 2018, by month. In December 2018, the Android operating system had a market share of 94.5 percent in Mexico.

Smartphone OS market share in Mexico - additional information

The Android Operating System has seen its market share steadily rise in Mexico throughout, with the company finishing 2016 controlling over 90 percent of the market. These figures are consistent with recent worldwide trends in which Android has asserted its dominance in the market. The Google-backed company is predicted to hold almost 85 percent share of the global smartphone market by 2016, in stark contrast to the 3.9 percent share it had in 2009.

Despite the fact that Blackberry has struggled in the global markets in recent years, it has persisted in the Mexican market with less than one percent of the market since the beginning of 2016. In contrast, Apple’s iOS has achieved limited success in Mexico in comparison to its popularity in the rest of the world. At the end of 2016, the Apple operating system held 3.7 percent of the market share in Mexico, which is significantly lower than the 18.3 percent market share it enjoyed globally.

The mobile phone industry in general has grown in Mexico since 2009. An estimated 70 percent of the population, are forecast to use a mobile phone by 2017, this is the equivalent of around 86 million people. Of these mobile users in Mexico, 57.8 percent are predicted to own a smartphone by 2017, in comparison to just 30.7 percent of all mobile users in 2013. This means that 51.8 million people are expected to be smartphone users in Mexico by 2017.

Media Production Software Market By Size, Share, Trends, Growth, Opportunity, and Forecast, 2017-2027, Segmented By Broadcast, By Product Type, By Enterprise Type, By Operating System and By Region, Competition Forecast and Opportunities

Apple's mobile operating system, iOS, led in the ranking of mobile operating systems in Sweden by market share. Apple accounted for nearly 60 percent of the total market share, whereas Android followed with around 40 percent. All other mobile operating systems each had a share of less than one percent. Sweden’s leading operating system in general, however, is Windows with a minimal lead with its 34.55 percent market share over iOS which is ranked second, with 28.17 percent. What operating systems Swedes use?     Swedish mobile users of different ages were asked what operating system their main phone had in 2017. The younger representatives, aged between 18 and 34, tended to be more keen on iOS. In contrast, people in all age groups over 35, preferred Android that year. Operational systems in Europe The market shares of mobile operating systems varied significantly between 2010 and 2020. iOS led in the ranking in 2010, followed by Blackberry, while Android and Windows Phone had less than ten percent each that year. However, Android’s market share increased drastically between 2010 and 2014, and has been having the highest market share among the mobile operating systems in Europe from 2013 onwards.

Around 70 percent of smartphones in Germany used Android as an operating system as of June 2023. Apple's iOS was Android's only main competitor, accounting for the remaining 30 percent of the market.

The statistic shows the market share of the Android operating system of smartphone sales worldwide from 2011 to 2018. In the fourth quarter of 2018, Android's market share was 84.2 percent.

Android OS - additional information

In 2003, when the smartphone market was still in its early development stages, Android. Inc. was founded in Palo Alto, California, with the initial intention of creating an operating system for digital cameras. Two years later, the company was acquired by Google, confirming rumors of the tech giant’s plans to enter the mobile phone market. The first Android operating system was introduced in 2007, with the goal to compete with the then-leading smartphone operating system Symbian. Android accomplished this goal by 2011, when it became the leader of the global smartphone OS market, with about 47 percent of the share, while Symbian fell to third place and was pushed out of the market by 2013.

As Symbian faded out of the market, Apple became Android’s main competitor on the mobile operating system market. However, Android has been the main player in the market since 2012, and is forecast to maintain this leadership in the coming years. In the first quarter of 2016, about 84 percent of smartphones sold to end users used Android as its operating system. Android is expected to maintain its smartphone market share of about 85 percent up to 2020, while Apple’s iOS is projected to account for 15 percent. One of the main reasons for Android’s popularity is its strong collaboration with smartphone manufacturers, such as Sony, Samsung and HTC, while the iOS is limited to operating on Apple devices.

Upon its success in the smartphone market, Android has expanded its operating system to tablets. Android had a slow start in this market, mainly due to the lack of quality applications for Android tablets. However, Android managed to overcome this issue and establish itself as the leading tablet operating system in 2012. Android is now the most used operating system for tablets worldwide, with a 67 percent share of the global market in 2015.

In the first quarter of 2024, mobile devices (mobile phones and tablets) running on Android OS accounted for 76.36 percent of the mobile traffic generated by mobile devices in Mexico, making the operating system the most popular in the North American country. iOS ranked second with a 23.38 percent share.

This graph shows global sales figures for smartphones from 2009 to 2017, broken down by the operating system installed on the phones. In 2017, 1.32 billion Android smartphones were sold around the world.

Global smartphone sales by operating system

In 2013 over 967 million units of smartphones were sold to consumers worldwide. Of the smartphones sold to end users in the final quarter of 2013, almost 78 percent ran on the Android operating system, equating to sales of almost 220 million units. Based on unit shipments of these smart devices, Android’s market share increased further in 2014 with the company holding over 80 percent of the global smartphone operating system market in the first quarter of 2014.

The second most popular smartphone operating system based on sales to consumers is Apple’s iOS. The company held a market share of 17.8 percent in the final quarter of 2013 and sold over 50 million units. In the whole of 2013, a total of over 150 million units of Apple iPhones were sold worldwide, an increase from 125 million units in the previous year. Based on sales of new smartphones worldwide, Apple’s operating system held a market share of 15.5 percent in the first quarter of 2014, a fall from 17.9 percent from the previous quarter. However, Apple smartphones remain particularly popular in the United States where the iOS operating system holds a 42 percent market share, an increase from its 27.3 percent share three years previous. Yet Android remains the dominant operating system in the U.S. as it controls over 50 percent of the smartphone OS market in the country.