Latest Statcounter data shows strong Nokia growth, steep Apple decline

Latest Statcounter data shows strong Nokia growth, steep Apple decline

December 26, 2012 | By Surur

Here is some interesting data from the last 30 days of Global Statcounter data.  Statcounter measures web usage and can be seen as a proxy of the installed base of devices in the hands of actual users.

The above data shows how much on average each OS grew or declined in percentage per day over the last 30 days, and should be read as “Over the last 30 days, on average Android grew 0.021% per day on StatCounter’s Global chart of the top 8 mobile operating systems from the 26th November to 25th December 2012.”

The data, generated by a linear regression of Statcounter’s numbers, produce some very interesting results.

It of course separates the growing  operating systems from the ones in decline very clearly, and surprisingly finds the biggest losers being Apple, and the biggest winner being Nokia.

Surprisingly over the last month Apple has been in major decline, dropping more than 0.056% per day, starting the month at 24.87 market share and ending it at 21.98.

Android of course was growing, at around 0.021% per day, starting at 32.98% and ending at 33.72%

Blackberry was predictably in decline, starting at 3.95% share, and ending at 3.55%.

It is Nokia’s platforms which surprisingly saw the biggest growth. Windows Phone was of course growing, if very slowly, in market share, starting the month at 0.91% and ending it at 0.96%, growing on average 0.0014% per day, around 7% of Android’s growth rate.

The fastest grower on the chart was however Nokia’s S40 platform, as currently found on their Asha line, which grew from 13.94% at the start of the month to 15.5% at the end of the month, adding on average 0.029% per day, or close to 50% more than Android per day.

Even Symbian grew, from 10.41% to 11%, or around 0.01% per day.

If we add Nokia’s platforms (which are ALL growing) together, and add a fudge factor of Nokia owning 75% of the Windows Phone market, Nokia’s platforms grew from 25% to 27.2% of the market, or around 0.041% per day, or twice as fast as Android, which if it continues would leave Nokia once again as the leading platform vendor in a year and a bit.

The numbers add some further colour to a recent analysis, which suggested Android was losing out to even lower cost Nokia S40 handsets in developing markets, which presented a real challenge to the meteoric growth of Android, and also suggests Nokia will likely announce pretty good performance of their Asha line next month.

It also shows that something is going seriously wrong with Apple’s market share – possibly producing the same phone with minor variations will eventually kill the product, much like it did for the Motorola Razr, and shows investors were justified moving their money from Apple to Nokia.

For Windows Phone it shows that there is still much work to do in terms of catching on, but at least it finds itself on the right side of the growth curve.

Get the raw data from Statcounter here.