Apple tops US Smartphones: hits 40.6% share of US smartphone subscribers!

Research firm comScore is out with its new report measuring the state of the United States smartphone market for a three-month period ended September 30 and Apple’s iPhone grew its share to comprise a healthy 40.6 percent of the nation’s smartphone units. In other words, four out of each ten smartphones in the country were iPhones.

Samsung also gained share, LG stayed flat while HTC and Motorola both lost ground amid strong competition from Apple and Samsung devices. All told, iOS seems to be gaining ground overall, adding 0.7 percentage points to its share versus 0.2 percentage points for Android. The full reveal and charts can be found after the break…

The comScore MobiLens analytics surveyed 30,000 mobile subscribers in the country.

Their data indicates that Apple grew from 39.9 percent share in June to 40.6 percent in September, a 0.7-percentage point gain. Samsung went from 23.7 percent in June to 24.9 percent share in September, a 1.2-percentage point increase.

It’s interesting that Samsung and Apple together grew by a combined 1.9 points, which is roughly the same as the 1.8 points loss by others so the two tech titans obviously continue to chip away market share from everyone else. comScore data includes only ten days of iPhone 5s/5c sales (the handsets went on sale on September 20).

As for total smartphone subscribers, the ubiquitous Android platform of course continues to lead with a 52 percent share, a modest 0.2-point gain from June. At the same time, Apple’s iOS (comScore counts only smartphones) is at 40.6 percent share while everyone else gets relegated to a single-digit share.

BlackBerry continues on a downward spiral and lost 0.6 points, now sitting at 3.8 percent. Microsoft grew slightly from 3.1 percent in June to 3.3 percent in September and Symbian stayed flat at 3.3 percent.

147.9 million Americans owned smartphones in September, up 4.5 percent since June.

Google Sites ranked as the top mobile media property with 90 percent of the mobile media audience, followed by Facebook (84 percent), Yahoo Sites (82.2 percent), Amazon Sites (65.5 percent) and Apple.com (50.8 percent reach).

Facebook was the top smartphone app with 74.3 percent share of the app audience, followed by Google Play (53.9 percent), Google Search (53.2 percent) and YouTube (49.6 percent). Pandora Radio cracked the top 5 for the first time with 49.3 percent reach.

iOS and Android together account for an astounding 92.4 percent market share, a new high.

Apple widens lead in US smartphone market as iPhone nears 40% share

Looking at tech news headlines from the past few months, you’d think Apple was in trouble. And not just “we had an off quarter” trouble, but “is Apple the new Research in Motion” trouble. Some folks even think Tim Cook could lose his job.

But looking at the bare numbers seems to suggest the exact opposite. The company just reported a record-breaking quarter. It has more than $130 billion in cash. And according to a new report, it has nearly 40% of the US smartphone market…

Marketing research firm comScore is out with its rolling monthly report—which measures the mobile device landscape in the US—this afternoon, and the results may surprise you: Apple is dominating the field right now with 39% of US smartphones.

That’s nearly double the share of its closest competitor, Samsung, who accounted for 21% of the market last quarter. And the usual suspects—HTC, Motorola and LG—took the last 3 spots with 9%, 8.5%, and 6.8% respectively. All down since the last report.

Of course, Apple doesn’t enjoy this type of success everywhere. Major markets like China and India, where prepaid plans are predominate, are still run by cheaper handsets. And that’s one of the main reasons why folks are calling for a budget iPhone.

But here in the US, Apple’s handsets are clearly still dominating. And it doesn’t look like that’s going to stop anytime soon. The Cupertino company is expected to debut its next-generation flagship smartphone, the iPhone 5S, in the next few months.

Apple widens U.S. lead over Samsung, makes ground on Google!

Research firm comScore reported Thursday that a survey of of the United States market for smartphones during the month of February 2013 has revealed Apple’s iPhone widening its lead over second-ranked Samsung, which went up one percentage point to grab a 21.3 percent share of US-owned smartphones during the three month average period ending February 2013. In other words and in another data point proving Apple doomsayers need to re-run their spreadsheets!

During the same timeframe, Apple’s has gone up from 35.9 percent in November 2012 to 38.9 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers in February 2013, an increase of 3.9 percentage points. The good news doesn’t stop here: Apple’s iOS mobile operating system which powers all iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices, increased 3.9 percentage points to 38.9 percent, matching Apple’s aforementioned smartphone devices share.

Google’s Android platform, available on numerous devices from dozens of manufacturers, still ranked as the top smartphone platform with a healthy 51.7 percent market share in February 2013, but it dropped two percentage points from 53.7 percent market share in November 2012…

Per comScore data, BlackBerry ranked third with 5.4 percent in mobile OS share while Microsoft (3.2 percent) and Symbian (0.5 percent) continue to be rounding errors.

According to independent analyst Horace Dediu, the numbers don’t mean people are abandoning Android. “To be clear, Android is not losing users, but they are gaining far fewer than iOS,” he wrote on Twitter.

In terms of top smartphone vendors, in addition to the #1 Apple (38.9 percent) and #2 Samsung (21.3 percent), HTC came in third with a single-digit share of 9.3 percent, while Google-owned Motorola and LG rounded up the top five list with their respective 8.4 percent and 6.8 percent share.

All told, researchers estimate that the United States had some 133.7 million smartphone owners. Growth, however, is notably slowing and was pegged at an estimated eight percent compared to comScore’s November 2012 data.

The smartphone industry appears to be saturated elsewhere as well, with today’s news of France Telecom complaining about a slowdown European carriers are feeling over belt-tightening amid the continued fragility of the economy there.

CEO Stephane Richard, who runs France Telecom, warns “there are fewer early adopters”so selling a phone for $600 is “getting more and more difficult.”

“Customers are more focused on price,” he told Bloomberg Businessweek. “Except for a few hundred thousand people who will buy the latest iPhone – except for that category of people – the majority of the market will be difficult.”

US smartphone penetration rate chart via Asymco.

comScore data highlights his point: the U.S. smartphone market is obviously peaking with a 57 percent mobile market penetration, although we’re obviously still far from the saturation point as the remaining 43 percent non-smartphone owners upgrade to their first smart device.