Published on the 10/09/2015 | Written by Beverley Head

Apple must be hoping that the release of the new iPhone 6S this week will help spike sales in Australia and internationally…

According to new research from analyst Telsyte, more than 17 million Australians currently own a smartphone – but those who bought one in the first half of the year favoured Android devices over Apple.

Telsyte says that around 3.7 million smartphones were sold in the six months to June, 54 percent of which were Android with 41 percent share for Apple. Just 5 percent of sales were Windows phones.

The analyst has forecast that 4.5 million phones will be sold during the current six month period – no doubt spurred to some degree by the 6S and run up to Christmas.

Gartner meanwhile has issued its 2016 smartphone sales forecast for 2016 which predicts that while 221 million iPhones will ship next year, that will be eclipsed by 1.39 billion Android devices.

Much more lowly in both Telsyte’s and Gartner’s rankings is Blackberry – once the darling of the smartphone set.

During the week the company announced a shift in direction that will see it acquire mobile device management specialist Good Technology for $US425 million. Good’s suite of products, which has been widely deployed for its security features such as containerisation which allows corporates to send information securely to mobile devices, is clearly a lifeline for Blackberry which is now just a bit player in the smartphone devices market.

Meanwhile, the market for enterprise mobility management platforms is surging according to a new report from Ovum which has found that demand will almost quadruple during the next four years, reaching $US10 billion by 2019.

Currently mobile device management, which is where Good Technology operates, controls the lion’s share of this market – though Ovum notes that market is commoditising, suggesting Blackberry could again be facing the problem it faced in the smartphone sector unless it can push Good into the broader enterprise mobility management field.

Interestingly, although Telsyte has recorded a drop off in the popularity of IoS devices in Australia, 64 percent of Good activations currently come from such platforms.

That’s exactly the same market share (64 percent) that Apple commands in the Australian smartwatch market according to Telsyte. It says in total 205,000 smartwatches were sold in Australia in the first half of the year, but that a lack of killer apps is holding back demand – and also perhaps explains why about 10 percent of people who bought a smartwatch no longer use them.