Leading mobile operating systems ranked by market share in Italy 2010-2018

Apple’s iOS led the Italian mobile OS market until 2013. That year, Android took over. The years from 2010 to 2014 were the period of steepest growth for Android. In the following years, Google's OS continued to gain market share, albeit at a slower pace. In particular, between 2015 and 2018, Android’s market share passed from 63.53 percent to 74.53 percent. This coincided to a period of decline for the other two main mobile operating systems: Windows and iOS.

Apple’s competitors

Apple’s market share showed a decreasing trend in the first eight months of 2019 as well. In line with the European average, the majority of smartphones used in Italy were running on Android in 2019. In fact, Samsung and Huawei smartphones were much more popular than iPhones.

A new OS on the horizon

As a consequence of the Huawei U.S. ban, Google refused to renew Huawei Android license in May 2019. In August 2019, the Chinese manufacturer announced its operating system, Harmony. Huawei had a great customer base in Italy: about a quarter of Italian smartphone owners had a Huawei smartphone in 2019. However, the odds that Harmony will manage to disrupt the mobile OS market are low: in the past, Microsoft and Blackberry's attempts to launch alternative operating systems failed to take off.