Beancounters Kantar Worldpanel said that Android's market share increased 7.1 per cent across Europe in the first three months of the year, where it now holds 75.6 per cent of the market to Apple's 18.9 per cent, which fell from 20.2 per cent.

In Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, Android grew largely at the expense of Windows Phone, whose sales fell 5 per cent, while close to 7 per cent of first time Android users were migrating from Windows,

In Italy and Spain, formerly the strongest and most loyal Windows Phone markets, close to 10 per cent of Windows Phone users chose to switch to Android during the three months ending March 2016. However mid-range Chinese handsets made by Huawei, Wiko and Asus are dominating elsewhere in the EU while in Britain, Samsung continued to dominate Android growth. The market share increase was the strongest across Europe in more than two years.

Android sales in the US, which were up 7.3 per cent to 65.5 per cent, were also boosted by unexpectedly strong sales of Samsung's flagship handset the Galaxy S7. Despite only being available for the last three weeks of the first quarter of the year, the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge managed to account for 5.8 per cent of all smartphone sales, making the Galaxy S7 the fifth best-selling model during the period.

Google is due to announce the newest version of Android, codenamed Android N, at its annual Google I/O developers conference this week.  The Tame Apple Press is doing its best to spin the figures claiming that Apple will clean Android's clock when it releases its now iOS 10 next month  and iPhone 7 in September. However saner heads have pointed out that the iPhone 7 is looking like a clone of the iPhone 6S which sold poorly and Apple is not expected to do anything new with its phones until need year.

Apple's iOS share fell 4.9 per cent in the US and 5 per cent in China, although sales of the new iPhone SE were not included in the data, as it went on sale on March 31. But then the iPhone SE, which is a copy of the iPhone 5S,  is not selling particularly well either.