Main image of article Yep, Android Still Leading Worldwide

Google Android continues to dominate the smartphone space, according to new data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. For the first three months of 2014, the research firm found that Android held a comfortable lead in nearly all of its survey countries, including the EU, Australia, China, the United States, and Great Britain. Despite that advantage, however, Apple still managed to make inroads in a number of countries, particularly Japan. Click here to find mobile developer jobs. In the U.S., for example, Android held a 57.6 percent share in March 2014, followed by Apple’s iOS with 35.9 percent and Windows Phone with 5.3 percent. In Japan, iOS actually led with 57.6 percent, ahead of Android with 41.5 percent (and Windows Phone with a barely-there 0.9 percent). In China, Android claimed 80 percent of the market, trailed by iOS with 17.9 percent and Windows with 1 percent. “Apple regained ground in the first quarter of 2014, primarily due to the strong performance of the iPhone 5S, growing its sales share in Europe, Japan and Australia,” Dominic Sunnebo, strategic insight director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, wrote in a statement accompanying the data. “By contrast, Windows had a tough start to the year as a result of its entry-level Nokia models facing fierce competition from low-end Motorola, LG and Samsung Android smartphones.” Kantar Worldpanel ComTech takes worldwide statistics on phone purchases and usage and combines it with data from interviews it conducts with phone owners around the world, and uses that combined dataset to produce its sweeping conclusions regarding market-share. Those conclusions are already obvious to anyone who works in mobile development: Android is the 800-pound gorilla in the space, followed (in mind-share if not in actual market dominance) by Apple’s iOS, with Microsoft’s Windows Phone still struggling to make a sizable impact. Developers interested in making a profit will adjust (or maintain) their use of resources accordingly.

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