comScore has recently published a report dealing with smartphone penetration in Europe. Their findings are somewhat surprising as they’ve found that Spain — which is in the midst of recession — has the highest smartphone penetration in Europe, with 63.2% of mobile phone users owning a smartphone. Moreover, Spanish market has also experienced the strongest growth with a 14.8 percentage point increase versus the prior year. Here are other notable figures:
- UK: Apple remains the leading handset manufacturer in the UK, capturing 28% of the market or 8.6 million users, followed by Samsung (24%), RIM (15.2%) and HTC (15%). Google’s Android platform now captures 46.6% of the smartphone audience, whilst Apple’s iOS holds 28%. Google also showed the most significant growth over the year, increasing its market share by 12.4%.
- The European smartphone audience has increased 35% in the past year, growing from 97.7 million in October 2011 to 131.5 million in October 2012. The current smartphone penetration in EU5 markets is 54.6% of mobile phone users, a 13% increase compared to same period last year.
- As we said, Spain has the highest smartphone penetration (63.2%), followed by UK (62.3%) and France (51.4%).
Additional figures along with a full report are available from comScore’s website.