comScore today released the results of its monthly rolling survey of U.S. mobile phone users for the November-January period, finding that Apple's smartphone marketshare rose 3.5 percentage points between October and January, up to 37.8% of both U.S. smartphone platform and hardware sales.
Samsung was second in hardware makers with 21.4%, up from 19.5% three months earlier. HTC and Motorola both experienced significant drops in market share, while LG gained slightly.
Google's Android was the largest smartphone platform with 52.3% of smartphone platform share, down from 53.6% three months ago. Android, BlackBerry, Microsoft and Symbian all lost share, to the benefit of Apple. As a result, Apple and Google control more than 87 percent of the smartphone market.
Notably, comScore's data tracks installed user base rather than new handset sales, making it more reflective of real-world usage but slower to respond to shifting market trends than some other studies.
Wednesday February 19, 2025 8:02 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple today introduced the iPhone 16e, its newest entry-level smartphone. The device succeeds the third-generation iPhone SE, which has now been discontinued.
The iPhone 16e features a larger 6.1-inch OLED display, up from a 4.7-inch LCD on the iPhone SE. The display has a notch for Face ID, and this means that Apple no longer sells any iPhones with a Touch ID fingerprint button, marking the ...
Tuesday February 18, 2025 12:02 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
Over the years, Apple has switched from an aluminum frame to a stainless steel frame to a titanium frame for its highest-end iPhones. And now, it has been rumored that Apple will go back to using aluminum for three out of four iPhone 17 models.
In an investor note with research firm GF Securities, obtained by MacRumors this week, Apple supply chain analyst Jeff Pu said the iPhone 17, iPhone...
Thursday February 20, 2025 5:06 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Now that Apple has announced its new more affordable iPhone 16e, our thoughts turn to what else we are expecting from the company this spring.
There are three product categories that we are definitely expecting to get upgraded before spring has ended. Keep reading to learn what they are. If we're lucky, Apple might make a surprise announcement about a completely new product category.
M4...
Wednesday February 19, 2025 11:38 am PST by Juli Clover
Following the launch of the iPhone 16e, Apple updated its iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia pages to give a narrower timeline on when the next updates are set to launch.
All three pages now state that new Apple Intelligence features and languages will launch in early April, an update from the more broader April timeframe that Apple provided before. The next major point updates will be iOS ...
Thursday February 13, 2025 8:07 am PST by Joe Rossignol
In a social media post today, Apple CEO Tim Cook teased an upcoming "launch" of some kind scheduled for Wednesday, February 19.
"Get ready to meet the newest member of the family," he said, with an #AppleLaunch hashtag.
The post includes a short video with an animated Apple logo inside a circle.
Cook did not provide an exact time for the launch, or share any other specific details, so...
Apple today announced its first custom cellular modem with the name "C1," debuting in the all-new iPhone 16e.
The new modem contributes to the iPhone 16e's power efficiency, giving it the longest battery life of any iPhone with a 6.1-inch display, such as the iPhone 15 and iPhone 16.
Expanding the benefits of Apple silicon, C1 is the first modem designed by Apple and the most...
Tuesday February 18, 2025 8:46 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple is permanently closing its retail store at the Northbrook Court shopping mall in the Chicago area. The company confirmed the upcoming closure today in a statement, but it has yet to provide a closing date for the location.
Apple Northbrook opened in 2005, and the store moved to a larger space in the mall in 2017.
Apple confirmed that affected employees will continue to work for the...
I really don't think it's right to call android the largest "smartphone platform", because:
1. Really its "mobile platform" and when you look at the post-PC era, tablets, namely the iPad Market is a big chunk of mobil devices, and when you include these numbers- the iPad has really dominant share making iOS the dominant platform. Looking just at "smartphones" is selective reporting to try and exclude the market where Apple has had the most success, skewing the numbers in favor of android.
2. Android is hugely fragmented. iOS devices are mostly all running the latest iOS software and even ones that aren't can all run apps without modification. This is not true on android where covering %80 of the market requires changing your app to support 167!!! different devices.
3. I don't consider android to really be a platform, simply because it is so compromised. As a ripoff of iOS they had to rush it to market and in doing so compromised a lot of functionality.
4. Android is primarily sold to feature phone buyers as if it were a featurephone. These people walk in to get "a phone" and get sold android by the weenies at the carriers store... but they don't use them for apps or for even browsing the web, which is why the web stats on android are so pitiful. Android is really a feature phone operating system (hence the fragmentation and incompatibility)
5. You'd be just as correct to lump all the other Linux derivatives together and claim that there's a "linux smartphone platform".
6. We don't have real hard numbers for shipping devices for android. Amazon doesn't publish actual numbers. Google doesn't publish actual numbers. Samsung doesn't publish actual numbers. There's a lot of hype and BS claims that these devices are selling in huge numbers, but when samsung was forced to report actual sales in the lawsuit last year, it turns out that when journalists were claiming big sales the reality was pitiful. Most of these "sales" are actually non-android featurephones also sold by these companies who don't break them out because they want to seem more dominant than they are.
Get me real numbers reported in annual or quarterly reports that would result in an investigation by the SEC and charges of fraud if they were made up-- and use those.
Apple provides them. Until android manufacturers are willing to report the numbers under penalty of perjury like Apple does, they're just PR smoke, nothing more. (or analysts "projections")
These stats are being distorted by the propaganda of android fans who claim that it is a platform, and a smartphone platform at that and that it is dominant
Considering that there are only 6 iPhone models and at least 1000 Android phones I wouldn't say that 37.8% (iOS) to 52.3% (Android) is too bad of a margin
People use iPhones more because they last longer. It's not built from really poor quality plastic (ala Samsung). It's got software updates for at least twice or thrice as long as Android based devices (exception are Nexus devices). And let's not forget there are better quality apps on iOS in general. Oh and iOS is easier to use and the interface is consistent across multiple devices, multiple versions of the OS.
BTW - "rushed to market" ? Yeah - maybe MAYBE OS1.0 - but now? Not so much. ICS and JB weren't "rushed" no matter how much you really want to say it.
What functionality has been compromised in Android. Name some.
Your rationalization is hilarious.
Lastly - why so defensive and dismissive? Someone at Google kidnap a loved one?
I really don't think it's right to call android the largest "smartphone platform", because:
1. Really its "mobile platform" and when you look at the post-PC era, tablets, namely the iPad Market is a big chunk of mobil devices, and when you include these numbers- the iPad has really dominant share making iOS the dominant platform. Looking just at "smartphones" is selective reporting to try and exclude the market where Apple has had the most success, skewing the numbers in favor of android.
2. Android is hugely fragmented. iOS devices are mostly all running the latest iOS software and even ones that aren't can all run apps without modification. This is not true on android where covering %80 of the market requires changing your app to support 167!!! different devices.
3. I don't consider android to really be a platform, simply because it is so compromised. As a ripoff of iOS they had to rush it to market and in doing so compromised a lot of functionality.
4. Android is primarily sold to feature phone buyers as if it were a featurephone. These people walk in to get "a phone" and get sold android by the weenies at the carriers store... but they don't use them for apps or for even browsing the web, which is why the web stats on android are so pitiful. Android is really a feature phone operating system (hence the fragmentation and incompatibility)
5. You'd be just as correct to lump all the other Linux derivatives together and claim that there's a "linux smartphone platform".
6. We don't have real hard numbers for shipping devices for android. Amazon doesn't publish actual numbers. Google doesn't publish actual numbers. Samsung doesn't publish actual numbers. There's a lot of hype and BS claims that these devices are selling in huge numbers, but when samsung was forced to report actual sales in the lawsuit last year, it turns out that when journalists were claiming big sales the reality was pitiful. Most of these "sales" are actually non-android featurephones also sold by these companies who don't break them out because they want to seem more dominant than they are.
Get me real numbers reported in annual or quarterly reports that would result in an investigation by the SEC and charges of fraud if they were made up-- and use those.
Apple provides them. Until android manufacturers are willing to report the numbers under penalty of perjury like Apple does, they're just PR smoke, nothing more. (or analysts "projections")
These stats are being distorted by the propaganda of android fans who claim that it is a platform, and a smartphone platform at that and that it is dominant
