A new analytical report published today notes that Android sales declined in the US, UK, and France, as iOS continued to make gains across most regions in the three months ending November 2016. For Android, this marks the sixth consecutive period of decline in the US, at 55.3% of all smartphone sales, down from 60.4% in the same period a year earlier.

In Urban China, iOS was down year-on-year at 19.9%, but continued strong period-on-period growth with sales from iPhone 7.

iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, and iPhone 6s were the three most popular smartphones in the US at the beginning of the holiday period, for a combined 31.3% share.

Lauren Guenveur, Consumer Insight Director at Kantar noted in the report that "The Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge were the fourth and fifth best-selling phones in the US, with Samsung capturing 28.9% of smartphone sales." In October Patently Apple posted a report titled "Samsung's Heir Apparent was hoping for the Galaxy Note 7 to outflank the iPhone 7." With today's data it's clear that if the Note 7 wasn't dropped due to their faulty design causing fires, the goal of Samsung's heir would have succeeded as the Note7 would have generated at least 5 percentage points to these statistics.

Android continued its dominance in China with "Nearly 80% of all smartphones sold in Urban China during the three months ending November 2016 were Android, as local brands continued to dominate the market," said Tamsin Timpson, Strategic Insight Director at Kantar.

"Huawei represented 25% of all sales, but its share declined 3.1 percentage points from the three-month period ending October 2016, marking only its second period of decline in more than two years."

The report further noted that "Oppo posted strong growth in China with 12.9% of smartphone sales, signaling the first potential shift in the market since Huawei overtook both Apple and Xiaomi in the second quarter of 2015.

Importantly for iOS and Apple, iPhone 7 became the best-selling device in Urban China at 6.6%, pushing Oppo R9 to second place at 4.7%."

The good news should continue as we reported yesterday that Foxconn noted that their December was very strong due to robust sales of the iPhone Plus model.

Apple Market Share Mostly Positive in EU5

iOS and Android made gains across EU5 (Europe's big five markets include Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain), largely due to the decline of Windows. The best showing for iOS was in in Great Britain where it was up 9.1 percentage points for the year ending in November 2016.

Dominic Sunnebo, Business Unit Director for Kantar Europe note for the report that "In the EU5 countries, Android accounted for 72.4% of smartphone sales during this period, with iOS at 24.6%, a strong year-on-year uptick for both ecosystems as Windows' share declined to 2.8%.

For Android, this represented a 2.8 percentage point decline from the October period, while strong sales of iPhone 7 boosted iOS."

The iPhone 7 having strong sales in the U.S, urban China and EU5 seems to be contradicting the doom and gloom over iPhone 7 sales by Apple critics. Apple could surprise the market with better than expected numbers or at least be inline with company expectations when they report at the end of the month.

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