Penetration rate of smartphones in Spain in 2019, by brand

Samsung was the smartphone brand that held the largest market share in Spain in 2019. With 30 percent of the total market, this Korean brand outstripped the Chinese Huawei by 6 percentage points. iPhone, Apple’s flagship smartphone, was the third largest brand in terms of market share as of the same year with 21 percent of the market.

Android vs. iOS in Spain

The predominance of Android smartphones over iOS in Spain is indisputable – the Google-developed operating system held approximately 90 percent of the total market share during the period in consideration. Apple’s iOS peaked in January 2017 with 13 percent of the total share, although the mobile system popularity dwindled in the subsequent months and took up approximately 9 percent of the market by the beginning of 2019. This trend can vary significantly across countries – the popularity of iOS devices in United Kingdom, for instance, was greater than that of Android for a long while, although the Google system has gained widespread acceptance among the British population in the recent years.

The rise of mobile communications

Mobile telephony has come a long way in a relatively short period of time. The number of cellphones is projected to reach 13.09 billion devices worldwide in 2019, and it is only expected to grow more over the next years. The global smartphone penetration is forecast to hit over 50 percent, meaning that more than half of the world’s population owns or has owned this type of mobile device in 2019. This might also be related to the fact that smartphones have become more affordable over the recent years, with the average smartphone costing around 324 U.S. dollars in 2017.