Kantar analytics: iPhones dominated the US during holidays, Samsung followed close

Kantar Worldpanel — the market analytics company — has come out with its numbers for the final quarter of 2016 (the three months ending with November), and the report shows that Apple is still going strong in Western markets.

The iPhone 6s, iPhone 7, and iPhone 7 Plus were the top three most popular smartphones among shoppers with a combined share of 31.3%. Samsung's Galaxy S7 and S7 edge took the fourth and fifth spot making 28.9% of sales in the smartphone segment. In total, Android smartphones took 55.3% of all sales, which is down from 60.4% for the same period in 2015.

The Google Pixel, which launched near the end of the quarter, in late October, and was plagued by supply issues, still managed to get 1.3% of the sales, which is not bad for Google's first flagship. The search giant owes more than half of those sales to Verizon, according to Kantar's data.

In EU's top 5 markets (Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain), both Android and iOS took from Windows' declining market share. Apple nabbed 24.6% of smartphone sales, while Android devices combined got 72.4%. Windows handset sales shrunk to 2.8%.

Over in China, local manufacturers are still dominating the scenes — around 80% of sales in the country were of Android handsets with Huawei holding 25% of the overall pie. Apple still managed to nab 19.9% of the sales, and the iPhone 7 contributed to iOS' growth in the region by 2.8%.