Market share held by smartphone OS in Spain 2017-2023, by month

The predominance of Android smartphones over iOS in Spain is indisputable: from 2013 to June 2023 the Google-developed operating system held over 75 percent of the total market share. Apple’s iOS market share peaked in April 2023 with 23.6 percent of the total share. This trend can vary significantly across countries – the popularity of iOS devices in the 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.

Huawei’s situation in the world and in Spain

The Huawei Honor P8 Lite topped the list of best-selling smartphones in 2017. The Chinese smartphone and wireless technology company was blacklisted in the United States upon Trump administration’s decision to ban American companies from working with Huawei and any of its products. The popularity of this Chinese manufacturer in the U.S. is reportedly much lower than in other European countries, according to the latest surveys. Huawei is in contrast one of the most popular smartphone manufacturers in Spain, with nearly 20 percent of Spanish users owning a Huawei smartphone as their day-to-day mobile device in 2019.

The rise of mobile communication

Mobile telephony has come a long way in a relatively short period of time. The number of cellphones is projected to reach 18.22 billion devices worldwide in 2025, and it is only expected to grow further over the next years. The global smartphone penetration is forecast to hit over 50 percent in 2019, 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.