ComScore: iPhone gains market share, Samsung flat
updated 08:13 pm EDT, Tue October 2, 2012
Poll doesn't include iPhone 5 announcement, release
Apple is gaining market share among US phone buyers; its arch-rival Samsung's share remains flat, even as the South Korean company leads all phone manufacturers. This according to the newest figures from comScore, which just released its August report on the US mobile subscriber market. The research firm's August figures found the iPhone maker gaining more share than any of the other top manufacturers, and doing so even before the release of its smash hit iPhone 5.
ComScore's figures show the top five mobile manufacturers (including both smartphones and non-smartphones) to be, in order, Samsung, LG, Apple, Motorola, and HTC. From May to August, Apple and HTC saw their market shares increase by 2.1 and 0.2 percent, respectively. Motorola saw its share drop by 0.8 percent, and LG's declined by 0.9 percent.
Samsung retained the lead among all manufacturers, with 25.7 percent of the market, the same figure it had for May. Apple now controls 17.1 percent of the US market, according to comScore's figures.
The firm also found that 116.5 million people in the United States owned smartphones during the three months ending in August, an increase of six percent versus May. Google remained the top smartphone platform with 52.6 percent of the market, up 1.7 percentage points from prior measurements. Apple's share increased 2.4 percentage points to 34.3 percent.
ComScore also took a look at what activities were most popular among mobile users. Their survey found that text messaging was the most popular action, with 75.6 percent of respondents indicating they texted other phones. The percentage of users that had used a downloaded app increased 2.3 percentage points to 53.4 percent, and the number that used a browser grew 2.2 percentage points to 52 percent. The study found that more respondents accessed social networking sites, played games, and listened to music on their phones than had in May of this year.
