IPhone gains in most markets except China

In China, Android continued to make year-on-year gains with 87% of smartphone sales (iOS dropped to 12.4%).

But in the UK Apple’s iOS share of the market increased 5.6 percentage points to 40.4% of smartphone sales and in the US it increased 5.6 percentage points to 38.9%.

Lauren Guenveur, consumer insight director for Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, said: “The first quarter of 2017 produced the lowest iOS share in China since the second quarter of 2014 with 12.4% of smartphone sales.

“For iOS, this represents an 8.6 percentage point drop from the first quarter of 2016. At the same time, iPhone 7 remained the best-selling device in urban China with 3.8% of a market that has become increasingly fragmented.”

Huawei continued to dominate in urban China at 36% and Oppo – which took the Chinese market by storm in 2016 – has become the second largest Android brand with 13% of sales. Samsung fell to sixth place behind local Chinese vendors Xiaomi, Meizu and Vivo, at just 5% of sales

Guenveur added: “While Chinese vendors are enjoying growth in places like EU5, Latin America and India, the same cannot be said in the US, which remains dominated by Apple ( 39%), Samsung ( 30%), and LG ( 12%)."