Within the three-month period August to October 2015, Apple lost a substantial part of its market share of smartphones in the U.S. and Europe.
A report by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, released on Wednesday, says that the iPhone share in the U.S. market dipped 8.3 percent to 33.6 percent for those three months compared for the same period 12 months ago. At the same time, smartphones that run on Google's Android OS went up by a higher 9.5 percent to claim 62.8 percent of the market, reports CNET.
The same trend was observed in Europe where there was a 2.2 percent dip in iPhone's market share in France, 1.7 percent in Italy and 0.6 percent in five top countries in Europe, made up of France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. That was for the three-month period June to August 2015, in comparison to the same months in 2014.
For the same period, Android share went up 6 percent in Italy and 2.9 percent in France. In Britain, the strong performance of Samsung and LG slowed down Android's decline in the area, shares Kantar Business Unit Director Dominic Sunnebo.
The tech website explains the decrease in market share of smartphones made by the Cupertino-based tech giant to the iPhone 6S being an interim model. Localytics, a analytics company, points out, "Typically, consumers are less likely to bite on Apple's 'S' model iPhones."
For the same period, Apples competitors released their flagships designed to match the latest iPhone iteration. These were the Samsung Galaxy S6 and LG G4.
However, another report by IDC, a market research firm, forecasts that Apple will have a 15.8 percent share of worldwide smartphone market shipments that would grow to 226 million units for 2015. In contrast, total world market shipment would expand by only 9.8 percent. However, despite a projected 9.5 percent shipment increase for 2015, Android would remain the dominant smartphone platform.