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.
Monday December 16, 2024 8:55 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple released iOS 18.2 in the second week of December, bringing the second round of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update brings several major advancements to Apple's AI integration, including completely new image generation tools and a range of Visual Intelligence-based enhancements. Apple has added a handful of new non-AI related feature controls as...
Wednesday December 18, 2024 11:39 am PST by Juli Clover
Apple is no longer planning to launch a hardware subscription service that would let customers "subscribe" to get a new iPhone each year, reports Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Gurman first shared rumors about Apple's work on a hardware subscription service back in 2022, and at the time, he said that Apple wanted to develop a simple system that would allow customers to pay a monthly fee to gain...
Monday December 16, 2024 4:17 pm PST by Juli Clover
Blackmagic today announced that its URSA Cine Immersive camera is now available for pre-order, with deliveries set to start late in the first quarter of 2025. Blackmagic says that this is the world's first commercial camera system designed to capture 3D content for the Vision Pro.
The URSA Cine Immersive camera was first introduced in June, but it has not been available for purchase until...
Apple launched the controversial "trashcan" Mac Pro eleven years ago today, introducing one of its most criticized designs that persisted through a period of widespread discontentment with the Mac lineup.
The redesign took the Mac Pro in an entirely new direction, spearheaded by a polished aluminum cylindrical design that became unofficially dubbed the "trashcan" in the Mac community. All of ...
Friday December 20, 2024 2:22 pm PST by Juli Clover
It's looking like 2025 is going to be an important year for Apple, with the company planning to revamp the iPhone, push further into smart home products, and improve Apple Intelligence. There are tons of new products rumored for 2025, including new iPhones, M4 Macs, a smart home command center, and much more.
We've highlighted the top five Apple products that will have the biggest impact in...
Tuesday December 17, 2024 9:02 am PST by Joe Rossignol
The current Apple TV 4K was released more than two years ago, so the streaming device is becoming due for a hardware upgrade soon. Fortunately, it was recently rumored that a new Apple TV will launch at some point next year.
Below, we recap rumors about the next-generation Apple TV.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman last week reported that Apple has been working on its own combined Wi-Fi and...
Contrary to recent reports, the iPhone 17 Pro will not feature a horizontal camera layout, according to the leaker known as "Instant Digital."
In a new post on Weibo, the leaker said that a source has confirmed that while the appearance of the back of the iPhone 17 Pro has indeed changed, the layout of the three cameras is "still triangular," rather than the "horizontal bar spread on the...
Wednesday December 18, 2024 10:05 am PST by Juli Clover
Elevation Lab today announced the launch of TimeCapsule, an innovative and simple solution for increasing the battery life of Apple's AirTag.
Priced at $20, TimeCapsule is an AirTag enclosure that houses two AA batteries that offer 14x more battery capacity than the CR2032 battery that the AirTag runs on. It works by attaching the AirTag's upper housing to the built-in custom contact in 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
