Josh Ong
comScore noted Apple's steady upward climb when it released on Tuesday quarterly data from its MobiLens service, which surveyed 30,000 mobile subscribers users.
Apple's share of the smartphone market grew 1.1 percent when compared to the fourth quarter of 2011. The figures were up 0.5 percent from Apple's three-month average from February.
The Cupertino, Calif., company's growth was outpaced by the Google Android platform, which grew 3.7 percent sequentially to reach 51 percent market share.
Research in Motion and Microsoft lost out during the quarter. The BlackBerry maker fell from 16 percent in December 2011 to 12.3 percent in the March quarter, while Windows Phone maker watched its market share slip from 4.7 percent to 3.9 percent during the same period.
Source: comScore
According to the research, Apple was the third-largest handset maker in the U.S. during the March quarter. Samsung took the top spot from the survey with 26 percent, up 0.7 percent from the previous quarter. LG came in second place with 19.3 percent share. Motorola and HTC trailed Apple in fourth and fifth place, respectively.
Apple announced last month sales of 35.1 million iPhones during the March quarter.
Estimates have disagreed as to whether Samsung or Apple took the top spot among global smartphone makers fro the quarter. Strategy Analytics and IDC see Samsung as having won out, while IHS iSuppli believes Samsung shipped just 32 million smartphones.
Charles Martin
Christine McKee
Malcolm Owen
57 Comments
Incredible numbers. What a crazy world we're living in. 35 million units...
I think share figures always should be presented with actual user figures as well. A decline in percentage for one part might look like someone is loosing customers when it's not the case. The whole smartphone market is growing, right? It just means that the one that see a decline in share isn't growing as fast as the others. It might still be healthy business though.
I'd like the following data accompanying the share percentage:
Share: X%
Change in share: +-X%
Number of users: X
Change in number of users: X
Correct me if I'm bad at math, but I don't think that T-Mobile has enough customers to offset Apple's majority (not plurality) at AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint. Especially not enough to kick Apple to 31%.
Remember when the iPhone was announced and Steve Jobs hoped to claim 1% of the hand-held market? 5 years later and it is 14 times the initial goal.
1% of the handheld market which means including the feature phones
Which still does not say that this isn't an incredible feat. Kudos!
Looking at the chart, there's been a total inversion with the previous OS leaders now at the bottom and those who were not part of the old boy's club, being at the top.