Apple Wins U.S. Smartphone Sales, Android Wins Platform Share

Research firm ComScore has just revealed its latest batch of numbers for the mobile market. Unfortunately, they carry few surprises for those who have any inkling of just how things typically go in the iOS / Android world — with a few extra platforms on the side for good measure.

As you might expect, Apple retained its lead as the top smartphone manufacturer (for U.S. sales) between November 2013 and January 2014 — coincidentally, measured but a few months after the launch of the company's latest flagship phone, the iPhone 5s, and its less-expensive, colorful colleague, the iPhone 5c.
Samsung took second place at a market share of 26.7 percent, sitting quite a bit behind Apple's market share of 41.6 percent. Both companies added a little bit since ComScore's last survey for the three months ending October 2013, tacking on approximately one percentage point or so. LG took up third place on ComScore's list with its single-digit market share of just shy of seven percent, with Motorola and HTC coming in at 6.4 percent and 5.4 percent respectively. Losers, if any, were the latter: Motorola's market share dropped six-tenths of a percent from ComScore's last survey, and HTC dropped 1.3 percent.

But that's not all.

ComScore also took a look at smartphone platforms for its survey: In other words, the operating systems that power said devices you're using. As you might expect, Android took the win in the category over Apple, if for nothing else than the fact that there are far more Android devices generally sold than iPhones.

As to why, just do the math: Apple has but a handful of products on the market and it's the exclusive manufacturer of all of them. Android, however, can run on a number of smartphones created by a number of manufacturers. Sales of all Android devices in total are considerable, especially worldwide, and therefore allow the platform to reign supreme even if Apple can still outsell individual Android manufacturers.

Got it?

Back to the figures. ComScore reports that Android is up to a 51.7 percent market share, dropping half a percent from ComScore's last October 2013 survey. Apple's iOS has grown a single percent in this time period, up to 41.6 percent from 40.6 percent. BlackBerry, Microsoft, and Symbian platforms combined barely put a dent in either Android or Apple's market share. Individually, they sit at 3.1 percent, 3.2 percent, and 0.2 percent respectively.

Source : pcmag