Kantar sees iPhone 4S push Apple past Google in UK

The iPhone 4S helped Apple achieve a rare resurgence in British share that toppled Android, Kantar's Worldpanel ComTech found Monday. Apple's October share hit 42.8 percent of UK smartphone sales, knocking Android down to 35 percent. It managed a similar feat year-over-year, with iPhone share up 2.8 points for August through October to hit 27.8 percent, pushing Android down from 49.9 percent to 46 percent.

Most of those sales were to existing owners, Kantar said, suggesting that the Apple base was enough to drive much of the traffic. About 75 percent who bought an iPhone 4S had already owned an earlier iPhone, and 14 percent of the total were upgrading from the iPhone 4, or eager enough to either pay an early termination fee or a higher device price to upgrade early.

It's not clear which platforms the remaining 25 percent of iPhone 4S buyers were coming from, although Apple has historically poached mainly from RIM. The BlackBerry dropped 1.3 percent from year-to-year to hit 19.6 percent in quarterly share.

Whether or not the gains are sustainable isn't certain and may depend on both sustained interest past the holidays and the appeal of lower-cost iPhones. It nonetheless challenges the assumption that Android will always be in the lead because of the plurality of manufacturers. With HTC lowering expectations and only Samsung, Huawei, and ZTE known to be doing well among major builders, the platform's gains are no longer certain. [via GigaOM]

By Electronista Staff