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.
Elie Chahine 