Motorola's Moto G smartphone has had a dramatic impact on the company's share of sales in the three months to the end of February, taking the Google subsidiary from almost zero to 6% of sales in the UK, according to new research.

Kantar Worldpanel ComTech says that the Moto G was particularly popular with men aged 16-24 in "lower income" groups: 83% of buyers were male, and 40% have annual earnings of below £20,000.

That suggests that Google's efforts to democratise the ownership of smartphones has been a significant success with the low-priced phone, which retailed sim-free for just £135 while garnering highly positive reviews. In the UK, smartphone ownership has now hit 70%, Kantar says, and smartphones make up 86% of phones sold - the latter statistic having stayed constant for about six months.

Tech-savvy

Dominic Sunnebo, Kantar's global strategic insight director, said: “Consumers are far more tech savvy than they were just a few years ago and the rising commoditisation of smartphones means we increasingly rely on online views and handset cost to drive our decision making.

"Some 40% of British consumers are heavily influenced by internet reviews when deciding which mobile to buy and 48% of Moto G sales were made online. With virtually no existing [Motorola] customers to sell to in Britain, the Moto G has stolen significant numbers of low-mid end customers from Samsung and Nokia Lumia.”

Google is selling the Motorola subsidiary to China's Lenovo in the coming months. Lenovo will have to decide how far to subsidise prices of phones like the Moto G; Google recorded large losses on its Motorola operation of up to a billion dollars a quarter, suggesting that the phone's pricing is not sustainable on its own.

Jostling for position

US smartphone sales share to Feb 2014. Source: Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. Photograph: /PR/Kantar Photograph: PR/Kantar

UK smartphone sales share to Feb 2014. Source: Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. Photograph: /PR/Kantar Photograph: PR/Kantar

EU5 (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, UK) combined smartphone sales share to February 2014. Source: Kantar Photograph: /PR/Kantar Photograph: PR/Kantar

Figures provided by Kantar suggest that sales share of the competing smartphone operating systems in the US, "EU5" countries (Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the UK) and UK has remained broadly unchanged over the past year.

In the US, Android and iOS have 55% and 38.5% of sales share. In the EU, Android has just under 70% against iOS's 19% and in the UK, Android has about 54% and iOS 32%.

However, there is little sign of Microsoft's Windows Phone making fresh inroads into those key markets. Although its share of sales has risen in all the key territories over the past year, it still remains in third place behind Apple's iPhone in every country for which Kantar provided data except Italy, where it has led the iPhone for sales since summer 2013.

Meanwhile BlackBerry's share of sales continues to fall, registering under 1% in the US, Germany, Spain and Japan (in both of which it was less than 0.1%), China and Australia. Its highest share was in the UK, where it recorded 3.4% of sales - well behind Windows Phone, which recorded 10.1%.

In the US, LG's high-end G2 helped it increase its share of sales, to 8%, making it the third largest handset maker in sales behind Apple and Samsung. Sunnebo noted that the G2 has scored extremely high in customer satisfaction ratings, at 9.2 out of 10 compared to 9.1 for Apple's iPhone 5S and 9.0 for Samsung's Galaxy Note 3.

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