Is Apple losing its hold on consumers in the Far East?

Apple's iconic iPhone is losing some of its luster among Asia's well-heeled consumers in Singapore and Hong Kong, it has been reported.

Driven by a combination of iPhone fatigue, a desire to be different and a plethora of competing devices, users are turning to other brands, notably those from Samsung, eating into Apple's market share.

Android is becoming really hard to ignore.

In Singapore, Apple's products were so dominant in 2010 that more devices here ran its iOS operating system per capita than anywhere else in the world.

But StatCounter gs.statcounter.com, which measures traffic collected across a network of 3 million websites, calculates that Apple's share of mobile devices in Singapore - iPad and iPhone - declined sharply last year. From a peak of 72 per cent in January 2012, its share fell to 50 per cent this month, while Android devices now account for 43 percent of the market, up from 20 per cent in the same month last year.

In Hong Kong, devices running Apple's iOS now account for about 30 per cent of the total, down from about 45 per cent a year ago. Android accounts for nearly two-thirds.

"Apple is still viewed as a prestigious brand, but there are just so many other cool smartphones out there now that the competition is just much stiffer," said Tom Clayton, chief executive of Singapore-based Bubble Motion www.bubblemotion.com, which develops a popular regional social media app called Bubbly.

Where Hong Kong and Singapore lead, other key markets across fast-growing Asia usually follow.

"Singapore and Hong Kong tend to be, from an electronics perspective, leading indicators on what is going to be hot in Western Europe and North America, as well as what is going to take off in the region," said Jim Wagstaff, who runs a Singapore-based company called Jam Factory www.jamfactoryonline.com developing mobile apps for enterprises.

Southeast Asia is adopting smartphones fast - consumers spent 78 percent more on smartphones in the 12 months up to September 2012 than they did the year before, according to research company GfK www.gfkrt.com.

Fatigued consumers

Anecdotal evidence of iPhone fatigue isn't hard to find: Where a year ago iPhones swamped other devices on the subways of Hong Kong and Singapore they are now outnumbered by Samsung and HTC smartphones.

While this is partly explained by the proliferation of Android devices, from the cheap to the fancy, there are other signs that Apple has lost followers.

Singapore entrepreneur Aileen Sim, recently launched an app for splitting bills called BillPin www.billpin.com, settling on an iOS version because that was the dominant platform in the three countries she was targeting - Singapore, India and the United States.

"But what surprised us was how strong the call for Android was when we launched our app," she said.

Indeed, 70 per cent of their target users - 20-something college students and fresh graduates - said they were either already on Android or planned to switch over.

"Android is becoming really hard to ignore, around the region and in the US for sure, but surprisingly even in Singapore," she said. "Even my younger early-20s cousins are mostly on Android now."