Mobile OS Market Share Worldwide by Month

The below graph represents the world's top 10 mobile operating systems by market share, starting from January 2009 to the recently completed month. Interestingly, the world’s top two mobile operating systems (Android and iOS) together accounted for 99.47% of the market, leaving other OSs to compete for the remaining 0.53% of the market.

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The above graph represents the monthly distribution of the mobile OS market share worldwide, starting from January 2009 to the recently completed month. Interestingly, the world’s top two mobile operating systems Android and iOS together dominating 99.47% of the market, leaving other OSs to compete for the remaining 0.53% of the market.

World’s Top Mobile OS by Market Share: In-Depth

RegionWorldwide
SourceStatCounter
Graph ID439
DurationJan 2009 – Apr 2020

As the graph shows, Google’s Android has been dominating the global mobile OS market for the last 8 years. In April 2020, about 70.68% of all mobile devices were running on the Android operating system, globally. That’s a notable 4.54 percent point decline from April 2019 when Android OS market share stood at 75.22%.

iOS – Apple’s own operating system for iPhones and iPads – is the second most popular mobile OS in the world. As of April 2020, approximately 28.79% of iPhone devices are running on iOS. That’s a modest 6.03 percent point increase in iOS market share when compared to the same period last year.

In May 2012, Samsung OS accounted for a record 7.18% share of the global mobile operating system market. However, in little over three years, exactly in July 2015, the Samsung mobile OS market share declined to just 0.97%. As of April 2020, approximately 0.17% all mobile devices run on Samsung OS, globally.

The usage share of Series 40 OS declined drastically in the last 5 years. The usage share of Series OS in the global mobile operating system market declined from 4.77% in April 2015 to just 0.02% in April 2020.

KaiOS market share clocked at 0.12% as of April 2020.

About Operating Systems: Additional Information

An operating system (OS), in its most general sense, is a program that manages hardware and allows a user to run other programs on a computing device.

While the research in the field of Operating System started in 1950, the first major breakthrough came only in 1962 when the first recognisable modern Operating System was built. Atlas Supervisor was the first program that successfully managed hardware to provide a controlled environment to various programs.

Almost every device that contains a processor is controlled by the Operating System nowadays. While there are many companies who have either launched or working on their own Operating System, there are three tech giants who dominate the global Operating System market.

Desktop Market is completely controlled by Windows OS created by Microsoft. In the last 3 decades, Microsoft introduced various versions of Windows OS, latest being Windows 10 OS. While almost every other company work on Windows OS, Apple has got its own Mac OS.

In the mobile space, Google’s Android is the undisputed king due to the strong app ecosystem and availability to other smartphone manufacturers. Unlike Android, Apple has decided to keep its own operating system for mobile devices, named as iOS, restricted only for devices made by the company itself.


The above graph is a part of Dazeinfo GraphFarm – the most trusted source of hundreds of thousands of market graphs. Our team of researchers mines millions of data points every month to bring the most updated and validated set of data points representing the comprehensive view in a graphical format. From mobile to e-commerce, from Retail to healthcare, from startups to SMEs we have carefully designed thousands of graphs for those who value and understand the importance of data visualisation.

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