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.

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.

Apple held the largest slice of the global smartphone market by shipments during the fourth quarter of 2024, followed by Samsung. Xiaomi has taken a tight grip on the third position, accounting for a market share of 13 percent in the fourth quarter of 2024. Samsung and Apple smartphone sales Smartphone vendors have been suffering from the events of the past couple of years, including the pandemic and the economic downturn. However, they all appear to be recovering, as shown by the recent increase in shipments. For instance, mostly based on the main line of Galaxy Series, Samsung's smartphone shipments totaled nearly 223.5 million units globally in 2024. Next to Samsung, Apple is a major manufacturer of smartphones worldwide, with the company shipping more than 228 million iPhones worldwide in 2024. Apple’s sales tend to be very cyclical, peaking in the fourth quarter each year, much like in the fourth quarter of 2023, when they took the first spot in terms of units shipped globally with around 80.5 units. Xiaomi in the lead While Apple and Samsung are typically the two major companies challenging for the top spot, Huawei had provided a strong challenge in recent years. Particularly, the Chinese company managed to climb the smartphone market ladder between 2011 and 2024, recording shipments of over 42 million smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2024. However, strong performances from rivals like Xiaomi and the effects of the U.S. trade ban have since seen Huawei fall outside the list of top five vendors by smartphone shipments.

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 2024, Samsung and Apple were leaders of the European smartphone market. Xiaomi grew from four percent in the first quarter of 2019 to 18 percent in the first quarter of 2024.

Smartphones make up the primary component of the European mobile phone market, with the smartphone penetration rate in Europe being forecast to reach almost 82 percent in 2024.

Leading manufacturers maintain their share. While the total share of the European market held by Samsung and Apple has fluctuated during this time, they still accounted for more than 50 percent of the total market in the first quarter of 2024. The two tech giants alone were responsible for around 40 percent of global smartphone shipments in the first quarter of 2024. Rather than the larger manufacturers, it has been the smaller manufacturers such as LG, ZTE and Lenovo that have seen their share of shipments decline. Since the third quarter of 2020, Huawei’s share has dropped significantly as well.

Huawei stalls Huawei’s previous growth was observed in the increase of total number of handsets shipped to 55.8 million units in the second quarter of 2020. However, in the fourth quarter of 2020, Huawei’s total number of shipments dropped significantly to 32.3 million, and their European smartphone market share dropped to 0.5 percent in the third quarter of 2021.

Samsung has been a consistent front-row competitor in the global smartphone market. In the fourth quarter of 2024, Samsung held a global smartphone market share of 15.6 percent. Samsung’s smartphone market shareThe smartphone market has fluctuated considerably since 2009. Nokia used to lead the industry with almost 50 percent of the smartphone market share in 2007, but the company’s market presence dropped to around three percent in 2013. Apple and Samsung have remained among the top five smartphone vendors in the world since 2009. Samsung’s Galaxy, first released in 2009, is their main line of smartphone products, while Apple heavily invests in the iPhone, a primary source of revenue for the company. Samsung’s smartphone market share increased significantly in a span of three years, going from three percent in the second quarter of 2009 to 32.2 percent in the second quarter of 2012. None of its competitors have experienced a similar growth. As the overall smartphone market also grew, Samsung was able to maintain its position as the global market leader. In 2024 alone, the Korean electronics giant shipped around 223.5 million smartphones worldwide, and accounted for 19.4 percent of all smartphone shipments worldwide.

The statistic shows the smartphone sales value worldwide from 2012 to 2017. In 2016, the global smartphone market had a value of 431 billion U.S. dollars.

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.

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.

Despite its market share dropping from over 55 to 46 percent compared to 2018, Apple was still the leading market player in the smartphone market of Hong Kong as of December 2024. Smartphone ecology in Hong Kong With a penetration rate of almost 97 percent, Hong Kong has a very beneficial ecology for the smartphone industry. The ownership of smartphones is even higher among people aged between 15 and 54 as almost everyone in this age group owns a smartphone. In terms of education level, the smartphone penetration rate among Hong Kongers who had a post-secondary education was 99.8 percent as of September 2022. Smartphone market in Hong KongHong Kong has long been a huge fan of Apple from an early stage. Apple’s market share has fluctuated from over 43 percent since the end of 2017, which rose in November 2018 to over 60 percent because of the launch of iPhone XR and dropped back to 44 percent at the end of 2019. Meanwhile, the second market player has been Samsung with a fifth of the market share in Hong Kong.

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.

Of all the smartphones with the Android operating system in Italy, Android 13 was the most popular, with a share of around 27.7 percent in the second quarter of 2024. The newer Android 14 has been rapidly gaining market share since its launch in 2023, occupying a share of roughly 25.5 percent in that same quarter. Overall, Android OS has a market share of around 70 percent in the mobile OS market in Italy.

As of March 2025, Apple accounted for around 463 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 40 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 60 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 96 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 five percent of people in Hong Kong who owned smartphone sometimes owned two or more smartphones.

As of 2024, Vivo accounted for the highest market share of the Chinese smartphone market at 17.2 percent. In that year, After a three-year absence, Huawei has returned to the top-tier smartphone market after the release of several popular models. The rise of HuaweiBack in 2014, the smartphone market in China was decentralized, with various domestic brands and major international brands like Samsung and Apple all accounting for only around one tenth of the market. During the last few years, the market became more concentrated with three domestic brands, namely Huawei, Vivo, and Oppo. The latter two belong to the same consumer electronic technology company BKK, while Huawei claimed to be a privately owned independent corporation. The three brands have dominated the Chinese smartphone market with a total market share of over 60 percent since 2018. Among the three, Huawei made a huge jump in market share from 2017 to 2019, almost doubling its market share from 20 percent to 38 percent. However, over the course of the trade disputes between China and the United States, the company was affected by sanctions which impacted its smartphone division. Chinese smartphone market  As the largest smartphone market in the world, the volume of smartphone shipments in China has been steadily increasing since 2011, with shipments once peaking over 460 million units in 2016. However, the figure started dropping in 2017 and even fell below 400 million units in 2018, parallel to the economic downturn worldwide and demonstrating the slowing down of the Chinese economic growth. Prior to the coronavirus outbreak in the beginning of 2020, the smartphone shipment in China was estimated to have dipped in the first two quarters but would begin to recover again in the rest of the year.

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.

This statistic shows global smartphone sales to end users broken down by operating system from the 2009 to 2018. In the second quarter of 2018, Apple sold 44.72 million smartphones with their iOS.

Smartphone sales by operating system -- additional information

Smartphone sales have strongly increased over the last few years. In 2009, the number of smartphones sold worldwide added up to 170 million. By 2015, this figure stood at more than 1.4 billion, generating almost 400 billion U.S. dollars in revenue. The market shows no sign of slowing down, as over a third of the world’s population is projected to own a smartphone by 2017, and the number of smartphone users is forecast to pass the 2.7 billion mark for the first time by 2019.

Android, introduced to the consumer market in 2007, has been the leading operating system since early 2011, after taking over the top position from Symbian OS. The number of Android smartphones sold increased from about 220 million units in 2011 to around 1.2 billion in 2015, while Symbian’s sales declined to about 28 million units in 2012, and later on was discontinued. Android’s market share jumped from two percent in early 2009 to nearly 82 percent by the end of 2016. Much of this growth can be attributed to the fact that many smartphone manufacturers, such as Sony, Samsung and HTC, have all built phones designed specifically for the Android system.

Along with the fall of Symbian and the increasing popularity of Android, RIM, which was the second biggest operating system at one point, saw its sales market share drop from about 20 percent in the beginning of 2009 to less than one percent four years later. Sales of RIM smartphones declined from around 50 million in 2011 to just over four million in 2015. Meanwhile, Apple’s iOS rose as the second most popular operating system in the world, accounting for around 17 to 24 percent of the market in the last few years. In 2015, Apple sold about 225 million iPhones which run on the iOS operating system. Microsoft’s operating system is the third most popular operating system in the world, as the company sold around 26 million Windows Phone smartphones in 2015.

After being squeezed by Xiaomi over the past few years, Samsung once again became the leading smartphone brand in India. Samsung led the market in three out of the four quarters of 2023. However, in the second quarter of 2024, Xiaomi and Vivo both surpassed Samsung in terms of market share, with 18 percent respectively. Aside from Samsung, the other four top smartphone brands are all by Chinese manufacturers. Smartphone market share in India The number of smartphone users in India, the second most populous country in the world, was on the rise. In 2023, there were about 1.01 billion smartphone users in the country. This figure was forecasted to jump to nearly 1.14 billion by 2025. By 2025, the share of the population in India that used a smartphone was predicted to rise to 78.4 percent. This growth can also be observed in the volume of smartphone shipments in India. The number of smartphone shipments in India increased from four million units in the second quarter of 2012 to 34 million units in the first quarter of 2024. Major players South Korean giant Samsung, a leader in the global smartphone market, had been the top smartphone vendor in India since early 2013, when the company held about 30 percent of the market share, until the end of 2017. But its position has been challenged by the Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi. Since its founding in 2010, Xiaomi has quickly risen to the top of China's crowded technology market and is now one of the leading consumer electronics manufacturers globally. The company specializes primarily in smartphones, but is also active in other markets.

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.

The statistic shows the global market share of smartphone operating systems by version in the first quarter of 2017. The Android 6 operating system accounted for 28.9 percent of the smartphone operating system market.

As of August 2024, the Android 14 operating system (OS) dominated the Android space over the Android 13 and 12 versions, holding a share of over 48 percent of all mobile Android devices in the United States. Android 13 held around 18 percent and Android 12 ranked third with approximately 12 percent market share.