We all know that Android is the more popular mobile OS globally based on market share. When it comes to APAC, is it the same story? Let take a closer look at each market in APAC. The graph below shows smartphone OS market share for each country in APAC in 2014.
As you could see, it is pretty much a two horse race between Android and iOS in APAC, just like other regions globally. It is true that Android has more than 50% of smartphone OS market share across markets in APAC.
If you wonder where the data sources are, here it is for CN, JP, AU, IN, KR, HK, TW, SG. For the rest of South east asia countries, I use data from GlobalWebIndex.
It is interesting to note that while Android absolutely dominates Chinese market, it doesn’t mean Google has an easy time in China. Because many Smartphone manufacturers in China use “forked” Android OS version, which means they don’t need to use various Google services and could use all popular Chinese internet services from Search to Maps to Video sites etc…
Next, for JP and AU, the second and third largest digital advertising markets, iOS has a very strong base. This obviously represents a big threat to Android (Google) since Google main revenue driver is advertising and the more users use Android and Google services, the more chances Google makes money. By the way, if you don’t know, the default search engine on Safari on iOS is Bing, not Google.
That’s all from me for today.
Cheers,
Chandler