Monday, April 02, 2012, 02:46 pm

Samsung rivaling HTC, Motorola to take second place among US carriers' after iPhone 4S

By Daniel Eran Dilger

While Apple's iPhone 4S remains the top selling smartphone across every US carrier that offers it, Samsung is working hard to expand sales and oust its Android rivals from second place.

Across the past four months, Samsung's Galaxy S II has established itself as the second most popular model at AT&T and Sprint, and the most popular phone at T-Mobile, which does not carry Apple's iPhone line.

At Verizon, the company's Galaxy Nexus, cobranded by Google, was ousted for second place by Motorola's cheaper RAZR/RAZR Maxx. HTC took the runner up spots on T-Mobile, while Nokia's Windows Phone 7 Lumia 710 model briefly appeared as T-Mobile's third favorite in January and February. It has since fallen out of the top three at that carrier, replace by the Galaxy S Blaze.



In a note obtained by AppleInsider, Canaccord Genuity technology analyst Michael Walkley wrote, "we believe iPhones are outselling all other smartphones combined at Sprint and AT&T and selling at roughly equal volume to all Android smartphones at Verizon," adding that Apple and Samsung "continued to consolidate share with sales rebounding after a slow start to 2012."

Walkley wrote, "our global checks also indicated another quarter of strong market share gains for Samsung, particularly in Europe and Asia. In fact, we believe Samsung’s strong smartphone portfolio across all price tiers will result in Samsung’s smartphone shipments increasing a remarkable 15%-plus sequentially during the seasonally weak March quarter.”

Samsung’s broad range of SKUs and price points "has resulted in share gains within the growing pre-paid smartphone market," the analyst said, noting that in the first quarter, Samsung shipped an estimated 28.2 percent of all smartphones while Apple's iPhone made up 22.4 percent of sales.