Android accounted for 49% of smartphone sales in the United States in the second quarter of 2026, up from 42% in the first quarter and 31% in the last quarter of 2025, according to Counterpoint Research’s operating system tracker. That is an 18-point swing in six months, and it puts Android within two points of iOS in the one large market where it has spent years on the wrong side of the split.
Android market share by country in Q2 2026
The US number is the interesting one because it moves. Counterpoint’s table has US Android share bouncing between 31% and 50% over the last eight quarters — 48% in Q3 2024, 35% the quarter after, 50% in Q2 2025, then a collapse to 31% in the final quarter of 2025 before the recovery to 42% and now 49%. That pattern tracks the iPhone launch cycle more than it tracks anything Android OEMs are doing: iOS share spikes in the December quarter when a new iPhone is on shelves, then gives ground back through the first half of the year.
- United States — Android 49%, iOS 51% (Q1 2026: 42% / 58%)
- India — Android 91%, iOS 9% (Q1 2026: 90% / 10%)
- China — Android 58%, HarmonyOS 24%, iOS 18% (Q1 2026: 63% / 19% / 17%)
- Global — Android 75%, iOS 20%, HarmonyOS 5% (Q1 2026: 73% / 22% / 5%)
China is the market where Android is genuinely losing ground rather than riding a cycle. Android has dropped from 66% of Chinese sales a year ago to 58%, while HarmonyOS has climbed from 17% to 24% over the same period and now takes 5% worldwide. Huawei’s platform has been eating into Android’s Chinese base for two years, and this quarter its lead over iOS in China widened to six points, the largest gap in Counterpoint’s two-year run.
India remains the outlier in the other direction, at 91% Android — a share that has barely moved in two years and is the single largest reason the global Android number stays in the seventies.
Sales share, not shipments — and the market is shrinking
One distinction worth holding onto: Counterpoint’s page measures sales share, meaning phones sold to buyers, not units shipped into retail channels. That matters because the underlying market is contracting. Counterpoint says global smartphone sales fell 11% year on year in the quarter, worsening from a 4% decline the quarter before, and that the drop was steepest in the entry-level and mid-tier segments across emerging markets. A share of a smaller pie is not the same as growth.
That is also the mechanism behind Android’s global slip to 75%. The cheap Android phone is what is disappearing from shelves, and Counterpoint says Chinese Android brands are deliberately pulling back from the entry level to cope with memory costs, shifting focus to higher-value devices to navigate RAM shortages and rising costs. Every phone that vanishes from the bottom of the range is a phone that would almost certainly have run Android.
Read this alongside IDC’s forecast published this week, which measures shipment volumes rather than sales and projects a record 16.7% drop for 2026. The two firms are counting different things, so the numbers should not be lined up directly — but they point the same way: fewer phones, sold at higher prices, with the squeeze concentrated at the cheap end.
What it means if you are buying
Counterpoint credits Apple’s quarter partly to competitors raising prices: “iOS recorded its highest-ever June quarter share at 20%, supported by steady demand for the iPhone 17 series and the launch of the iPhone 17e,” the firm writes, adding that price increases by rival brands strengthened the iPhone’s value proposition. That is worth sitting with, because it is a warning about your own next purchase rather than a scoreboard update. When Android OEMs push prices up to protect margins through a component shortage, the gap that used to justify choosing Android on cost closes — and buyers notice.
Counterpoint also notes the Galaxy S26 series sold better than its predecessor, which cushioned Android’s decline. In practice, that means Android’s share is increasingly being carried by expensive phones while the affordable ones it was built on thin out. If you were planning to replace a budget or mid-range handset this year, the practical advice is unchanged: the phone you can buy now is likely to be better value than the one that replaces it.
Sources: Counterpoint Research
