The Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Google Inc (GOOG) Mobile Duopoly Is Unstoppable

Duopoly defined
Android and iOS hit a new combined high, gobbling up 91.1% of the market and leaving less and less for everyone else. This combined market share was up slightly sequentially, but significantly year-over-year. The rise of these two platforms as the dominant operating systems has been nothing short of breathtaking, so the opportunities available to the No. 3 platform (and everything below that) continue to shrink in general.

This is the very definition of a duopoly.

Source: IDC.

It’s also worth remembering that Google isn’t benefiting as much as investors might think from Android ubiquity, since the search giant has lost control of the platform due to its open-source nature. China is now the largest smartphone market in the world, meaning that Android popularity in that country is a large contributor to Android’s broader gains. Specifically, Android does Google very little good in China since most of those devices are heavily forked and Chinese consumers tend to prefer local services like Baidu.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU).

Still, at this point it seems that nothing can put an end to Android and iOS hegemony.

The article The Apple and Google Mobile Duopoly Is Unstoppable originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Evan Niu, CFA.

Fool contributor Evan Niu, CFA, owns shares of Apple and Baidu. The Motley Fool recommends Apple, Baidu, and Google. The Motley Fool owns shares of Apple, Baidu, Google, and Microsoft.

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