Apple continues to add share in U.S. smartphone market, now holds 42%
Shane Cole
Smartphone buyers in the U.S. continue to flock toward Apple as the iPhone maker saw its marketshare tick upward to 41.6 percent — Â nearly as much as its four closest competitors combined — Â for the three months ending in January, according to data released Friday.
Apple's share represents a 1 percentage point bump from the previous quarter and a 3.8 percentage point year-over-year increase, market research firm comScore said in a new report. Samsung remains a distant second with 26.7 percent of the market, though the South Korean conglomerate did post a marginally more robust 1.3 percentage point increase.
LG, Motorola, and HTC rounded out the top 5 vendors with 6.9 percent, 6.4 percent, and 5.4 percent of the market, respectively. All three have lost share year-over-year, though LG fared the best — dropping just 0.1 percentage points in that period — likely thanks to its close relationship with Google.
Meanwhile, the gap between Apple's iOS and Google's Android mobile operating systems narrowed to just 10.1 percent in the January quarter, as Android ended the period down 0.5 percentage points to 51.7 percent. That margin was 14.5 percent one year ago.
Canadian smartphone maker BlackBerry, for its part, continues to slide. The company lost 0.5 percentage points in the quarter to end with 3.1 percent of the market, ceding third place to Microsoft's 3.2 percent share.
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