ComScore today released the results of its monthly rolling survey of U.S. mobile phone users for the October-December 2013 period, showing that Apple's U.S. smartphone market share has increased 1.2 percentage points since September, for a total share of 41.8 percent. Though Apple's share continues to grow, it still lags behind Android's total share of 51.5 percent, down 0.3 percent since September.
Looking at handset manufacturers, Apple and Samsung continue to dominate the category, growing their control of the market by 1.2 percent each over the three month period. Motorola, LG and HTC round out the top five, with all of them seeing flat or negative growth.
In Apple's earnings call last month, CEO Tim Cook warned that U.S. iPhone sales were weaker than expected because of U.S. carriers changing their upgrade policies. As a result, seeing share growth despite the headwinds is a positive sign for the company.
156 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones (65.2 percent mobile market penetration) during the three months ending in December, up 3.2 percent since September. Apple ranked as the top OEM with 41.8 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers (up 1.2 percentage points from September). Samsung ranked second with 26.1 percent market share (up 1.2 percentage points), followed by Motorola with 6.7 percent, LG with 6.6 percent and HTC with 5.7 percent.
Apple grew its smartphone market share by 0.6 percent from November, largely at the expense of Android and BlackBerry. Despite a significant marketing effort, Micrsoft's Windows Mobile has failed to gain any traction over the past three months, dropping 0.2 percent from 3.3% to 3.1% of total platform share.
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.
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...
This falls in line with the recent report from Counterpoint Technology Market that Apple is continually increasing its share of premium (>$400) phones, considering mostly premium phones are sold in the US thanks to the carrier contracts and subsidies.
Apple reportedly increased its share from 35% to 65% in just one year, and that graph doesn't even fully represent it yet. In the mean time, Samsung dropped from 40% to 21%. That's bad for them because their expensive phones (Galaxy S and Note series) were the ones generating profits.
40% + market share is an amazing number, especially considering Apple only sell 3 phones.
Note that this is about total current users, not sales.
So it includes all users of both new and old models, from any maker.
When the source is marked as being from MobiLens, it means it comes from comScore's own collection of 30,000+ long term volunteers who are supposed to be a representative group of users. They constantly report on what devices they use or stop using, how they use them, and so forth.
ComScore follows these same people for years and years, instead of surveying a small random group each time.
This is why these stats change more slowly than other brief snapshots of sales or browser stats. This data reflects a real life, fairly static group of people who have to deal with two year contracts, upgrade eligibility, family financials, and so forth.
