Apple's U.S. Smartphone Usage Share Continues to Climb

[MacRumors]

ComScore today released the results of its monthly rolling survey of U.S. mobile phone users for the September-November 2013 period, showing that Apple's U.S. smartphone market share has increased 0.5 percentage points for a total share of 41.2 percent. Though Apple's share continues to grow, it still lags behind Android's total share of 51.9 percent.

When measuring usage by handset manufacturer, Apple continued to come in first place by a wide margin, with Samsung coming in second at 26 percent and Motorola, LG, and HTC bringing up the rear with just over 6 percent share each.

152.5 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones (63.8 percent mobile market penetration) during the three months ending in November, up 3 percent since August. Apple ranked as the top OEM with 41.2 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers (up 0.5 percentage points from August). Samsung ranked second with 26 percent market share (up 1.7 percentage points), followed by Motorola with 6.7 percent, LG with 6.5 percent and HTC with 6.4 percent.

Collectively, Apple and Google control 93.1 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, with BlackBerry, Microsoft, and Symbian losing share during the November period.

ComScore's data tracks installed user base rather than new handset sales, which means it is more reflective of real-world usage but slower to respond to shifting market trends than some other studies.

Article Link: Apple's U.S. Smartphone Usage Share Continues to Climb

 

[jav6454]

Android sells more they say...

 

[sniffies]

Wait till they announce iPhone Air and iPhone Pro.

 

[Tiger8]

I assume this also accounts for secondary market; a lot of people passed their 4 and 4s - still great phones - to their teenage kids or nephews or neices... or even sold it on ebay.

 

[Will do good]

I assume this also accounts for secondary market; a lot of people passed their 4 and 4s - still great phones - to their teenage kids or nephews or neices... or even sold it on ebay.

Agreed. I sold my iPhone 4 16GB just 2 weeks ago on ebay and got $235.
It's was still working really well. Not sure how much you will get for a old Android phone.

 

[Piggie]

All good on Planet USA

 

[markyr17]

poor microsoft

 

[TallManNY]

Growth

Seems like there is still a lot of room for growth. Smartphones are so useful, the end game is probably nearly everyone over the age of 14 is carrying one of them eventually. The carriers might have to create some sort of cheaper data capped plans to pull some folks, but it is going to happen. Google keeps driving the price of the device down, so that is going to be less and less of a barrier.

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Agreed. I sold my iPhone 4 16GB just 2 weeks ago on ebay and got $235.
It's was still working really well. Not sure how much you will get for a old Android phone.

An android as old as the iPhone 4?!? Unless it is the Samsung Galaxy I doubt you would get anything.

 

[sir1963nz]

I assume this also accounts for secondary market; a lot of people passed their 4 and 4s - still great phones - to their teenage kids or nephews or neices... or even sold it on ebay.

As I have upgraded the phones have been handed down, so currently
I have a 5S
My Wife has the 4S
My Son has the 3G

And we are ALL happy.

 

[thelookingglass]

We mostly see US numbers. I'd be more interested in international numbers or at least breakdowns by different countries. Apple doing well in the US is almost a given these days. The more interesting stories are what's happening abroad.

 

[Klae17]

I assume this also accounts for secondary market; a lot of people passed their 4 and 4s - still great phones - to their teenage kids or nephews or neices... or even sold it on ebay.

There's a secondary market for Andriod also and people hand down their Androids all the time.

 

[roadbloc]

Why does MacRumors never have worldwide statistics? These US only stats are pretty useless in my opinion.

 

[Oletros]

Android sells more they say...

And is it false?


Regarding the graphs, are 0.5, 0.1 or 0.3 significative or are just the same magnitude of the statistical error?

 

[mejsric]

1 iphone vs 1000 android (and growing)

 

[KdParker]

poor microsoft

I know...dropping an already small share. They need to fire thier marketing team.

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And is it false?


Regarding the graphs, are 0.5, 0.1 or 0.3 significative or are just the same magnitude of the statistical error?

Yes in the since that android does sell any phones. But in order for iPhone to have such a high market share as one phone, it is picking up the sales from somewhere. Mainly ex android people would be my guess.

 

[Tiger8]

There's a secondary market for Andriod also and people hand down their Androids all the time.

No one is denying that, but a quick search on ebay shows that Apple devices retain their value much better than Android, could be the Operating system and continuous updates, could be the eco-system, or just the 'Apple' factor. Whatever it is - Apple's secondary market is the strongest among all.

Don't forget also Android has the lower end market advantage; and I don't mean this in a bad way. So for example, if I have $200 to spend on a contract free phone, I can buy a brand new Moto G (A great phone), but if I insist on Apple, I can buy a used iPhone 4.

 

[2457282]

Why does MacRumors never have worldwide statistics? These US only stats are pretty useless in my opinion.

As I have been observing the mobile industry for a while, I have to disagree. What is missing is the fact that we can no longer assume that the same phone works in all markets. As a matter of fact Apple now has 3 phones in the market and maybe more comming. I think we have to look at this both from an age perspective as well as from cultural/geographic perspective.

The younger want more social stuff, the older want more productivity/work stuff. I am also seeing a trend where the older are leaning towards bigger (at least fonts if not phones). We are also seeing color, feature and app trends that differ from one culture to another. so what works in the US may not work in China.

So understanding what is going on in the US is very useful to the US. It may or may not be useful to other contries.

 

[kobalap]

We mostly see US numbers. I'd be more interested in international numbers or at least breakdowns by different countries. Apple doing well in the US is almost a given these days. The more interesting stories are what's happening abroad.

Why is that interesting?

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Why does MacRumors never have worldwide statistics? These US only stats are pretty useless in my opinion.

Why are worldwide statistics more useful to you?

 

[ApfelKuchen]

The fundamental truth, whether it's Apple/Samsung, Coke/Pepsi, McDonald's/Burger King... When the two top players compete aggressively, it's the smaller players that lose, and both of the top dogs gain.

 

[aggrobot]

Misleading?

Am I missing something, or is this misleading? I've reread this article a few times, and I've taken a look at the comscore source. None of the graphs seem to indicate platform usage, as the headline suggests. Now, I miss all kinds of stuff all the time, so it could be something as little as simple as that. Can anyone point out where in this article or the comscore charts that *usage* is highlighted.

 

[BaldiMac]

We mostly see US numbers. I'd be more interested in international numbers or at least breakdowns by different countries. Apple doing well in the US is almost a given these days. The more interesting stories are what's happening abroad.

Why does MacRumors never have worldwide statistics?

MacRumors publishes global market share numbers from IDC every quarter. (And Gartner?) What more do you want?

These US only stats are pretty useless in my opinion.

Useless? How about a little context? Seems like they could be more useful to someone living in the US. Smartphones sold in China don't really affect my life as much as those sold where I live.

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The fundamental truth, whether it's Apple/Samsung, Coke/Pepsi, McDonald's/Burger King... When the two top players compete aggressively, it's the smaller players that lose, and both of the top dogs gain.

Like Dell and HP? Not quite a fundamental truth.

 

[Greg.]

I really don't understand how anyone can acclaim Apple's iOS going into 2014. I watch these commercials and see the same 6 year old phone marketing the same features every other phone has. Android has made further progress. On the initial startup everyone can see that iOS homescreens are a complete joke of modern software, the entire home interface is just a background with icons and labels on it. This is simplicity with loss of functionality. Widgets and the wide array of user customization are a serious feature missing from this operating system. It seems the common topic is that the 'app ecosystem' is somehow better on iOS than android due to the sheet number of apps on the appstore. The Apple appstore simply outnumbers android, it does not out feature android. There are close to no apps that exist on ios that do not have an equivalently functioning app on android. The ecosystem remark made is commonly used in conjunction with a lack of android's 'tablet optimized apps'. This is to say, that some apps made for phones do not scale to fill 'whitespace' on the displays of android tablets. This is rubbish to say that an app needs to clutter the screen more because there's more room to crowd with features. I'll argue that there are no apps on iOS that serve the function of modifying the operating system to extent that android provides. Apps like launchers, permission controllers, system maintenance, and hacking utilities. This is largely due to the difficulty of sideloading apps being unreasonable on iOS. Apple has control over what users are allowed to install to their device, and they make users do it through their store, and their store alone. Not only to profit through mobile developers having to use their service, but to hold the users hand along the way in the name of security.

 

[jayducharme]

I still remember Apple's optimistic goal when the original iPhone was released: to someday have 1% of the mobile phone market. I wonder if Jobs knew then that, like the iPod before it, the iPhone would become Apple's main source of income.

I'll argue that there are no apps on iOS that serve the function of modifying the operating system to extent that android provides.

And I'll argue that 80% of mobile phone users have no interest in that. They just want the phone to work.

 

[BaldiMac]

I really don't understand how anyone can acclaim Apple's iOS going into 2014.

All the rest of your post definitely proves your first sentence. (Emphasis mine.)

 

[roadbloc]

Why are worldwide statistics more useful to you?

Because not everybody (including myself) live in the US. It would be nice to have everybody's statistics taken into account to have a clearer view on what is occurring worldwide than one country.

How would people feel if all the statistics were UK only?