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Android Doubles Its Market Share in China, Symbian Still Ahead of iOS

New stats from Beijing-based Analysys International show that Google’s mobile OS, Android, doubled its market share in China in the past year, rising to account for 68.4 percent of smartphone sales by the end of 2011. Unless it’s close to reaching the plateau, it could well be the OS of choice for more than three-quarters of Chinese smartphone buyers very soon. Apple’s iOS, in contrast, appears to have gained and then lost some of its territory throughout the last year, ending it with 5.7 percent. Symbian – which covers a lot of devices that are really just erroneously marketed feature-phones – saw its sales share fall off a cliff over the same period, and is still in free-fall at 18.7 percent. It’ll almost certainly be in single digits by the end of the year, going in parallel with Nokia’s disastrous decline in China. Here’s the graph for the whole of 2011: Interestingly, this chimes in very well with web usage stats we looked at previously which showed that twice as many Android phones as iPhones were being observed browsing the web in China. And now with actual sales stats as well, we can see that the variety of Android devices at all kinds of price points has been a key to its success, giving Chinese consumers access to the world of apps and Angry Birds for as little as 1,000 RMB ($158) – way below the 4,999 RMB price-point of Apple’s iPhone.

Also note that Microsoft’s newest Windows Phone is not represented in the graph, having only officially launched in China just last month.