Leading mobile operating systems ranked by market share in Italy 2010-2020

Apple’s iOS led the Italian mobile operating system (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 Android continued to gain market share, albeit at a slower pace. In between 2018 and 2020 the growth stagnated, and Android’s market share passed from 74.53 percent to 74.52 percent.

Apple’s competitors

Apple’s market share showed a decreasing trend in the first six months of 2020 as well, but in the last six months of 2020 reclaimed the lost market share and ended 2020 with 27 percent. In line with the European average, the majority of smartphones used in Italy were running on Android in 2020. 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.