Andriod is still king of the Race! HarmonyOS Crossed iOS in China

Insights on smartphone operating system use were released quarterly by Counterpoint Research. Android remained the most popular operating system worldwide, according to the results, with iOS coming in second and HarmonyOS coming in third.

Some intriguing market insights were supplied by the research firm. The numbers don’t add up everywhere. In China, for example, HarmonyOS has already exceeded iOS and will keep growing until 2025.

Due to no change in smartphone sales in 2024, the results for both the QoQ and YoY are same. In the United States and India, for example, Android’s quarterly share hit a record low in Q4 2024.

For example, whereas smaller businesses’ sales fell by double digits year over year, Motorola and Google were able to counteract this, and iPhone sales fell by only 1% in the US.

Despite the fact that older iPhones were for two-thirds of all purchases, the fourth quarter of 2024 saw record-high iPhone sales in India.

With a consistent 4% share of the worldwide market, HarmonyOS continues to thrive. In China, the Huawei operating system beat Apple’s in every quarter of 2024, but it still finished third in a three-horse fight. Given that the Chinese government is offering a subsidy of CNY 500 ($70) for smartphones priced under CNY 6,000 (just over $800) in an effort to stimulate the economy, Counterpoint anticipates that HarmonyOS’s market share will continue in expanding.

Whether Huawei’s internal user interface (EMUI) for the international market is the same as its Chinese equivalent is not made clear by the research firm. In any case, it’s not like it matters much since Huawei sells most of its smartphones in China.