Kantar: Apple's share of smartphones up in nearly all markets on strength of iPhone 6 and 6 Plus for the three months ending November 2014
Context & Ripple Effects
Kantar's panel data for the quarter ending November 2014 captures the first full sales cycle of the larger-screen iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, and the result is share gains for Apple in nearly every tracked market — the moment the big-screen iPhone stopped being a gap in the lineup and became a weapon. The momentum carried straight into the new year: by February, TechCrunch reported the iPhone overtaking Android in US sales for the first time since 2012.
What makes this reading durable is that Kantar kept measuring the same swing factors afterward — a mid-2015 US dip to 30.5% even as Europe and China climbed, then a late-2016 jump to 40.5% attributed to Samsung's Note7 troubles. The November 2014 report is the baseline against which those oscillations are judged.
First-order effects
- Apple enters 2015 with share gains across nearly all markets tracked by Kantar, giving it pricing leverage on the 6 Plus at the top of the lineup.
- Android vendors lose the large-screen differentiation they had relied on, since the iPhone 6 Plus now occupies the phablet tier Kantar later measured at 21% of US sales.
Second-order effects
- Samsung's response path is visible in the corpus: its Galaxy S7 was eventually positioned to outsell the iPhone 6s in the US, meaning the 6-generation surge forced Samsung to compete head-on on flagship hardware rather than screen size alone.
- Kantar's quarterly share readouts become a recurring scoreboard that both camps' marketing cycles are timed against.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, smartphone market share becomes event-driven around each flagship launch — Apple's peaks tied to iPhone generations and Samsung's stumbles, as the Note7-driven 40.5% reading shows — rather than a stable structural split between iOS and Android.
The trend: Smartphone market share is consolidating into a two-horse flagship race where each new iPhone generation resets Apple's position against Android vendors.