Apple, Google and the monopoly of operating systems

Solo Android e iOS. There is no longer anyone in the pie mobile operating systems, for smartphones and tablets. According to the latest data from Statcounterrelating to April, the 71.43% of the world market, therefore of devices, is equipped with some version of Google’s green robot. The 27.85%, on the other hand, it is in the hands of the iPhone and, to a lesser extent, iPad. End.

The others have only the microscopic crumbs evidently linked to devices that have never been replaced, formally still operational but in fact lacking the basic requirements for a decent user experience online but also offline.

These are operating systems from Samsung, with which Statcounter probably alludes to Tizen OS, with the 0.42% of the market, followed by Kai OS, which arose within the Firefox community and at the time designed for emerging markets, and finally from 0.13% of unknown operating systems. There climb of android over the years it has been incredible: still in 2014 its share was around 40%, while iOS stabilized at that juncture around 20% and then gradually returned, albeit slowly, to grow. That year, just eight years ago, Blackberry still occupied around 5% of the pie and Nokia’s Symbian around 7%. In addition, of course, to other systems – such as WIndows Mobile, then Windows Phone, which has now disappeared since 2016 – which were around 30%.

The situation in Italy? Obviously aligned with the global one. Android in our market earns something, placing itself on the 72.78% of the devices against the 26.74% of iOS and derivatives. The rest is just 0.45% from Samsung. In 2009, the picture was completely different: Symbian was at 39%, iOS at 47%, Windows below 3% and SonyEricsson at around 1.4%. On the other hand, the first official release of Android was only launched in the previous autumn. Cupcake1.5, had arrived on devices in April 2009.