Kevin Bostic
Apple's iPhone increased its lead in the United States smartphone market through the end of May, inching toward a 40 percent share, while the other major competitors outside of Samsung lost share.
The newest figures from market research firm comScore found Apple going coming out of May with a 39.2 percent share of U.S smartphone subscribers, up 0.3 points from the period ending with February. Google's Android remained the overall top platform among America's smartphone owners with a 52 percent overall share, but Apple's iOS was second with 39.2 percent.
A solid second to Apple was its chief rival Samsung, which also gained share in the period ending in May, likely due to the launch of the Galaxy S4, Samsung's new flagship device. The South Korean conglomerate, which is the number one overall leader in smartphone sales worldwide, saw its share of the U.S. market move up 1.7 points from 21.3 percent in February to 23 percent by May.
Samsung and Apple already capture 100 percent of the smartphone industry's profits, according to some estimates. Now the two together account for more than 60 percent of the U.S. smartphone market.
comScore's figures saw the other major handset manufacturers continuing to shrink in importance. HTC and Motorola each lost 0.6 points to end May at 8.7 and 7.8 percent of the U.S. market. LG dropped 0.1 points to 6.7 percent.
Overall, though, the study seemed to indicate that the trend toward smartphone adoption shows no signs of slowing down. comScore found that 141 million people in the United States owned smartphones. That amounts to 59 percent mobile market penetration, up six percent since February.
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126 Comments
It is all about future growth, not present!
I hope Tim Cook and his team are taking things seriously for global growth. I remember Tim Cook saying "do not bet against us" What happened?
Here we go again: war of the pie charts.
So if these numbers are to be believed (and I'm always doubtful) does this mean in the US Samsung is taking market share from other Android manufactures and not Apple?
Are HTC and LG going to keep this up for much longer? Its just brutal. Google selling Mot branded handsets on one end, they won't stop, profits or no profits. And Samsung squeezing them from the other with immense marketing.
That's almost double Samsung's share! Screw Samsung, and screw Android!
Other phone makers can tout their market share in crappy countries and places that don't matter. Even Blackberry, which is a complete disaster, claims to do good in the middle east and other third world places that don't really matter at all. I mean, who really gives a crap if your phone is selling well in Somalia? That's nothing that I would want to boast about. It's not a good sign if your phone is only selling to third world people, as that is not exactly a lucrative market. It doesn't get much more bottom of the barrel than that!
The bottom line is that Apple is kicking ass in the US, and the iPhone continues to remain supreme, and will continue to do so in the future also.
And no, Apple does not need to make cheap, crappy phones for undesirable customers with no money. Those kind of phones already exist. That's what Android, Symbian, Blackberry and others are for.