AppleInsider Staff
The research firm's latest U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share report for January 2012 was issued this week, revealing that Apple's iOS gained 1.4 percent market share between October of 2011 and January of 2012. That put Apple in second place, behind Google's Android which grew its U.S. market share 2.3 percentage points in the same period.
Android, which is available on all domestic carriers with a wide range of handsets from multiple manufacturers, controls 48.5 percent of the market. Apple's lineup of three iPhone models put it in second place with 29.5 percent of the market.
In third was Research in Motion, which saw its market share drop 2 points to 15.2 percent. Microsoft also lost more ground, dropping 1 point to 4.4 percent and fourth place.
Rounding out the top five was Nokia's Symbian platform, which lost a tenth of a point. The Finnish handset maker accounted for 1.5 percent of total U.S. smartphone subscribers ages 13 and up in the three-month period ending in January.
The number of U.S. smartphone subscribers topped 100 million in January, up 13 percent since October. There are now 101.3 million smartphone subscribers in America, comScore said.
In terms of total hardware sales, with combined smartphone and "feature" phone sales, Samsung was the leader, accounting for 25.4 percent of all devices in use in the three-month period. Apple, which only makes smartphones, represented 12.8 percent of the market, an increase of 2 points from the October quarter.
Between Samsung and Apple are second-place LG, with 19.7 percent of the U.S. market, and Motorola, taking 13.2 percent. All of the top three saw their market share slip in January 2012, while Apple was the only company in the top five to gain ground.
comScore's study surveyed more than 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers. It also found that 74.6 percent of mobile subscribers use text messaging on their device, while 48.6 percent have downloaded applications, and 48.5 percent use a browser. Another 35.7 percent accessed a social networking site or blog, 31.8 percent played games, and 24.5 percent listened to music.
-m.jpg)
Christine McKee
Malcolm Owen
Marko Zivkovic
Andrew Orr
Andrew O'Hara
William Gallagher
-m.jpg)
27 Comments
so nice to watch Microsoft continue to lose market share. How much shareholder value are they throwing away on their failed phone platform? How long can it last?
so nice to watch Microsoft continue to lose market share. How much shareholder value are they throwing away on their failed phone platform? How long can it last?
Please don't count them out yet.
so nice to watch Microsoft continue to lose market share. How much shareholder value are they throwing away on their failed phone platform? How long can it last?
By the time Ballmer "ges it right", will anyone care? There's a smart phone feeding frenzy going on and monkey boy is still trying to get his worm on the hook.
I already care!
I never expect to own a Windows phone, and Metro cannot touch the full experience and usability of my iPhone, but Metro is at least genuinely new, interesting, and even visually appealing. And it’s still very young.
It wouldn’t shock me to see everyone, Apple included, using more Star-Trek-style flat colors and less shading in the next decade. (Kind of the logical trend from glass/aqua to what we have now and beyond. And Microsoft got there first! As a major OS at least—the general visual style has been done before. But beyond the look, a lot of the interaction in Metro really feels new and different; I can appreciate that even if I prefer iOS.)
The success of Android (an intentional BlackBerry clone that shifted to be an intentional iPhone clone) over Metro is a shame—it takes real choice out of the market. Metro is certainly a response to Apple and wouldn’t have happened without the iPhone. But it’s a response, not a clone attempt! I give credit for that. And Microsoft seems to be messing it up already... trying to shoehorn desktop Windows and Metro together.
But there’s time—there’s still a chance of some partial success for Microsoft here. And this gamble, in the long run, could be THE most important thing to throw their shareholders’ money at! They need to cling less to old models, not more.
watching RIM crumble like a train wreck in slow motion. And i can not look away.
M$ will remain entrenched and will be the solid 3rd place OS. We are guaranteed to see a halo effect, once pc's and tablets start using win8/metro. I will be downloading the beta this weekend.