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.
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
Sunday December 15, 2024 9:47 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple is planning a series of "major design" and "format changes" for iPhones over the next few years, according to The Wall Street Journal's Aaron Tilley and Yang Jie.
The paywalled report published today corroborated the widely-rumored "iPhone 17 Air" with an "ultrathin" design that is thinner than current iPhone models. The report did not mention a specific measurement, but previous...
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.
