Android phablets are winning everywhere… except in the US

Remember how, back in the day (i.e. a few years ago), all you wanted was a smaller cellphone? ‘Bricks’ were not cool: the more anorexic and petite the phone, the better. Skip forward to 2012 and you have people drooling over giant phablets like the Samsung Galaxy Note and a fresh batch of statistics that show that more than a quarter of new smartphones sold in eight countries around the world have screens larger than 4.5 inches. Oh, and that most of them are running Android.

According to a new report by telecoms researcher Kantar, the little green robot that could is becoming the dominant operating system in Europe (well, at least in the UK, Spain, Germany, France and Italy). Its market share has increased by 20% in the region in the past year: now two out of three smartphones are running Android. It’s a different story in the US though: they’re the only country (of the eight included in the study) where Android isn’t growing. Android sales have decreased by 4.5% in the country since August last year, while iOS has grown by 8.4%. Now 35% of new smartphones bought in the US are running Apple’s OS, and (only?) 59% are Android devices.

What is the situation like in emerging markets like Brazil? Well, Symbian has suffered the most: sales of smartphones with Nokia’s OS dropped by almost half (49.7% if you want to get technical), while RIM’s BlackBerry OS sneaked through with just a half percentage decrease. The fastest growing operating systems in the country are Android (32.8% increase), Windows Phone (10.3% increase) and iOS (4.3% increase since last year).

The size of the phones also seems to matter: 29% of the Android devices sold in the past 12 weeks have a screen size larger than 4.5 inches. It’s also impacting how people use their phones: those who own a device with a bigger display are more engaged with a range of activities on their phone. It makes sense if you think about it: for example, just 19% of consumers with a screen smaller than three inches download or watch videos on their device, as opposed to 65% of people with a screen larger than five inches. Browsing the web, navigating through a game and watching videos are all things you’d prefer to do on a larger screen.