Apple iPhone 5S outsells iPhone 5C by three to one

The smartphones have provided a boost for Apple’s market share, however

A man holds a new Apple iPhone 5S (R) next to his iPhone 5 at an Apple Store at Tokyo's Ginza shopping district September 20, 2013. (REUTERS/Toru Hanai)

The iPhone 5s has outsold the iPhone 5c, Apple’s budget offering, by three to one since the smartphones’ release earlier this year, market research firm Kantar Worldpanel has found.

The sales of Apple’s latest smartphones have been the driving force behind the surge in popularity of the Cupertino-based firm’s operating system, iOS. For the last three months, the iOS sales share in Britain sits at 28.7 per cent.

Despite the European market share boost that the iPhone 5c and 5s have provided, Apple still lags some way behind Android, with Apple only being able to boast a 15.8 per cent market share compared to Android’s 70.9 per cent.

Dominic Sunnebo, strategic insight director at Kantar Worldpanel, said that although Apple’s market share is lower than when the iPhone 5 was released, “this is not wholly unexpected as shoppers tend to react more positively to ‘full’ releases than incremental improvements such as the 5s and 5c.”

Apple’s European market share is a stark contrast to markets elsewhere in the world. In Japan, the iPhone’s market share hit 76.1 per cent during October this year, whereas in the US, it attained 52.8 per cent.

Even though the 5s outsold the 5c, Sunnebo said that “the cheaper 5c appeals to a broader audience than Apple usually attracts” and also claimed that almost half of iPhone 5c owners switched from other smartphone brands, such as LG and Samsung.