Apple's iOS, Google's Android grow to 80% of US smartphone market

Posted:
in iPhone edited January 2014


Apple's iOS and Google's Android mobile platforms continued to grow over the last three months, accounting for 80.3 percent of the U.S. smartphone market.



The market domination by Apple and Google was tracked in the latest data from comScore, released on Tuesday. It showed that the iPhone grew 1.5 points between November of 2011 and February of 2012, giving Apple a 30.2 percent share of the domestic smartphone market.



Google's Android also grew over the last three months by 3.2 points, giving it more than half of the total U.S. smartphone market. Devices running Android now account for 50.1 percent of smartphone subscribers in America.



While Google and Apple gained ground, its competitors continued to slip. Research in Motion saw the greatest decrease, as the BlackBerry platform dropped 3.2 points to take 13.4 percent of subscribers in February.



Microsoft, too, saw its position slip, losing 1.3 points to 3.9 percent of the domestic market. Nokia's Symbian platform was flat at 1.5 percent.











As for hardware, comScore found that Apple ranked third among all mobile subscribers, covering both smartphones and "feature" phones. The iPhone accounted for 13.5 percent of all mobile subscribers in the U.S., up 2.3 points from November of 2011.



The leader in hardware was Samsung, which stayed flat with 25.6 percent of subscribers, while LG came in second with 19.4 percent, down 1.1 points from November. Motorola was behind Apple, in fourth, with 12.8 percent, down nine tenths of a point, and HTC came in fifth with 6.3 percent, up four tenths of a point.



comScore found that more than 104 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones in the three months ending in February. That's up 14 percent when compared to the three months that concluded in November.



[ View article on AppleInsider ]

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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 76
    drblankdrblank Posts: 3,385member
    What's interesting is that Dell just dumped their Android smartphones, Google makes more money from ad revenue from iOS than Android. I wonder if Google has their heads screwed on correctly. If Google was smart, they would either have to dump Android or start charging $15 to $20 a head in order to make it worthwhile continuing development.
  • Reply 2 of 76
    aaronjaaronj Posts: 1,595member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by drblank View Post


    What's interesting is that Dell just dumped their Android smartphones, Google makes more money from ad revenue from iOS than Android. I wonder if Google has their heads screwed on correctly. If Google was smart, they would either have to dump Android or start charging $15 to $20 a head in order to make it worthwhile continuing development.



    Does the development really cost them much?



    The only point is to sell ads, anyways. Even if iOS ads make more than Android ads, the Android ads still make money.
  • Reply 3 of 76
    alienzedalienzed Posts: 393member
    Maybe I'm preaching to the choir here, but what gives? I barely know anyone who owns an 'Android' phone...
  • Reply 4 of 76
    drdoppiodrdoppio Posts: 1,132member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by alienzed View Post


    Maybe I'm preaching to the choir here, but what gives? I barely know anyone who owns an 'Android' phone...



    How well do you need to know them to believe in the statistics?
  • Reply 5 of 76
    ko024ko024 Posts: 68member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by drblank View Post


    What's interesting is that Dell just dumped their Android smartphones, Google makes more money from ad revenue from iOS than Android. I wonder if Google has their heads screwed on correctly. If Google was smart, they would either have to dump Android or start charging $15 to $20 a head in order to make it worthwhile continuing development.



    If you guys are interested in android economics, dediu recently wrote a nice article on it.. It is very interesting, but his ultimate conclusion is that google makes about 1.70 per device per year, which is much smaller than what it makes per iphone but is sustainable nonetheless... anyway, have a look at the article...



    http://www.asymco.com/2012/04/02/android-economics/
  • Reply 6 of 76
    ssquirrelssquirrel Posts: 1,196member
    No looking at all these changes as strict parts of the full 100% pie makes the changes for the companies decreasing look much smaller than they really are. If you divide the change by their market share they had back in November, you get a very different picture:





    Google: 6.82% increase

    Apple: 5.23% increase

    RIM: 19.28% decrease

    Microsoft: 25% decrease

    Symbian: No change



    RIM lost nearly 1/5 of their smartphone business and MS lost 1/4 of theirs. That is pretty devastating.
  • Reply 7 of 76
    drdoppiodrdoppio Posts: 1,132member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SSquirrel View Post


    No looking at all these changes as strict parts of the full 100% pie makes the changes for the companies decreasing look much smaller than they really are. If you divide the change by their market share they had back in November, you get a very different picture:





    Google: 6.82% increase

    Apple: 5.23% increase

    RIM: 19.28% decrease

    Microsoft: 25% decrease

    Symbian: No change



    RIM lost nearly 1/5 of their smartphone business and MS lost 1/4 of theirs. That is pretty devastating.



    You're ignoring the overall 14% growth in smartphones (and using too many figures after the decimal point).
  • Reply 8 of 76
    Quote:

    Microsoft, too, saw its position slip, losing 1.3 points to 3.9 percent of the domestic market. Nokia's Symbian platform was flat at 1.5 percent.



    Astonishing when you consider that Nokia's solution to their Symbian problem was to adopt Microsoft's phone OS...
  • Reply 9 of 76
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by alienzed View Post


    Maybe I'm preaching to the choir here, but what gives? I barely know anyone who owns an 'Android' phone...



    I never see any Android phones in use. All I ever see are iPhones.
  • Reply 10 of 76
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton View Post


    Astonishing when you consider that Nokia's solution to their Symbian problem was to adopt Microsoft's phone OS...



    I too was struck by the M$ decline.



    I wonder what the breakdown is between the old WinMo phones and the new? I wonder if the decline of the old is masking any advances with the new, or if the new style is growing, but falling behind general smartphone growth, or what?
  • Reply 11 of 76
    jragostajragosta Posts: 10,473member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AaronJ View Post


    Does the development really cost them much?



    The only point is to sell ads, anyways. Even if iOS ads make more than Android ads, the Android ads still make money.



    1. They make more money on iOS phones. If they didn't have Android, there would be more iOS phones. Since they make about 5 times as much per iOS phone, only 1/5 lost Android sales would have to be picked up by Apple for them to come out ahead.



    2. Even if the development cost is modest (which I doubt), if they pick up 1 iOS phone for every 5 Android phones lost, they still come out ahead by dropping Android.



    3. You're also ignoring the legal costs. They're spending a fortune on legal expenses defending themselves. And if they lose any of the cases, the losses would be even greater.



    4. They spent $12.5 B on Motorola. If they're not making money on Android, then a portion of that money is wasted.



    5. There's the matter of opportunity cost. Android is taking up management time and resources that could presumably be dedicated elsewhere.
  • Reply 12 of 76
    bullheadbullhead Posts: 493member
    So nice watching Microsoft continue to lose market share. Funniest thing is all the propaganda about Nokia and how magically people are going to buy their Windows Phone clones when all the other Windows Phone clones have failed. How much more shareholder money is Microsoft going to piss away on this latest failed platform?
  • Reply 13 of 76
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jragosta View Post




    3. You're also ignoring the legal costs. They're spending a fortune on legal expenses defending themselves. And if they lose any of the cases, the losses would be even greater.



    No I think you forget that outside of the Oracle case (which went from potential game changer to a joke essentially), none are attached to Google directly. Apple hasn't taken Google on directly, the OEMs are under attack, and Motorola's issues are not Google's, yet, anyway.
  • Reply 14 of 76
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    That doesn't look very good for vendors using Android.
  • Reply 15 of 76
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ko024 View Post


    If you guys are interested in android economics, dediu recently wrote a nice article on it.. It is very interesting, but his ultimate conclusion is that google makes about 1.70 per device per year, which is much smaller than what it makes per iphone but is sustainable nonetheless... anyway, have a look at the article...



    http://www.asymco.com/2012/04/02/android-economics/



    $1.70 is a far cry from the $10 goal Schmidt had. I hope Google didn't add the $10 goal into their projections. As far as sustainable, I'm not too sure about that. Expenses (business and legal) keep going up, up and up.
  • Reply 16 of 76
    Interestingly, in my extended family. those who went to college use iPhones... those who did not, use Android. They also have no intention of using Apple products. It's very curious to me to be honest.
  • Reply 17 of 76
    drdoppiodrdoppio Posts: 1,132member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Wheat Thins View Post


    Interestingly, in my extended family. those who went to college use iPhones... those who did not, use Android. They also have no intention of using Apple products. It's very curious to me to be honest.



    Cool story, bro.



    What phones do the ones who start their sentences with capital letters use?
  • Reply 18 of 76
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DrDoppio View Post


    Cool story, bro.



    What phones do the ones who start their sentences with capital letters use?





    I'm in the fetal position with no self esteem now....
  • Reply 19 of 76
    ssquirrelssquirrel Posts: 1,196member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DrDoppio View Post


    You're ignoring the overall 14% growth in smartphones (and using too many figures after the decimal point).



    How is going to 100s place using too many numbers? The cell phone industry increasing by 14% overall is all well and good, they have still lost market share in those percentages. With the increases in the total number of subscribers softens the blow, you still have numbers like below. Original figure, the 14% increased version in parentheses and adjusted change number after that. There really is no way to spin this as less than terrible for both RIM and MS.





    Google: 46.9 (53.466) +5.99%

    Apple: 28.7 (32.718) +4.58%

    RIM: 16.6 (18.924) -16.9%

    MS: 5.2 (5.928) -21.93%

    Symbian: 1.5 No Change





    Regardless, the original math I showed represents how much change there was in their piece of the overall pie. The fact that you have more people in the pie doesn't mean all that much. It just makes it slightly less crappy for them. Their (RIM and MS) market share is getting worse quickly tho.
  • Reply 20 of 76
    drdoppiodrdoppio Posts: 1,132member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SSquirrel View Post


    ...There really is no way to spin this as less than terrible for both RIM and MS.

    ...



    There's no way, and there's no need to spin it. Just leave the numbers alone...
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