The latest data from Kantar Worldpanel shows that iOS market share is just outgrowing Android across the five largest markets in Europe, growing 1.5% year-on-year against Android’s 1.4%, but dropping 3.3% in the USA.

iOS market share now stands at 32.6% in the USA and 15.4% across the top 5 European markets … 

It’s worth repeating our usual disclaimer here: Apple has never chased absolute market share–which includes a huge range of low-end Android handsets–instead focusing only on the smaller market for premium devices. Apple sales can be growing strongly while at the same time losing market share as the overall size of the market increases thanks to sales of cheap devices in emerging markets.

Kantar’s data, covering July to September, also only includes a very small slice of iPhone 6 sales, but even this was enough to reflect the strong early start which was demonstrated by record sales in the opening weekend.

The company noted that, unsurprisingly, early iPhone 6/Plus sales were to existing iPhone users.

It is clear that demand has been high for the eagerly awaited new models […] demand for the iPhone 6 has been very healthy.

With limited hard data on the sales split between the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, it’s interesting to see that, in Europe at least, the smaller model has been by far the most popular.

Initial sales of the new iPhone models have overwhelmingly been from existing iPhone owners (87%). This is not surprising as consumers who already own Apple products tend to remain loyal and are keen to get their hands on new models. Drawing in customers who are switching from competitor brands is more likely to happen once offers and promotions on the new iPhones start to kick-in.

The most dramatic fall in iOS market share was in Japan, where local companies Sony and Sharp have been enjoying a great deal of success. All the same, a year-on-year fall of 15.9% seems very high when Apple had put its own market share in the country at 70% just six months ago.

Across Europe’s top five markets, the iPhone 6 has outsold the larger iPhone 6 Plus by five-to-one.

Via TechCrunch