Almost one in three Americans now uses a smartphone, and 3 out of 4 have at least one mobile device. According to ComScore’s quarterly report on the mobile phone industry, Samsung remains the top handset manufacturer with 25.4% of the market, followed by LG with 19.7% and Motorola with 13.2%. The iPhone 4S helped Apple increase its market share to 12.8% for the three months ended in January, up from 10.8% for the previous three months. LG and Motorola both saw market share declines during the same period.
Despite market share losses for some Android phones, Google’s operating system remains the top smartphone platform – its market share increased from 46.3% to 48.6%. Google apparently believes that Android is now well enough established to forego its own storefront for apps — yesterday the search engine giant merged its Android Marketplace into Google Play, a new marketplace that offers music, books and movies as well as Android apps.
Apple’s iOS operating system also gained market share, rising to 29.5%, while RIM’s BlackBerry OS slipped to just 15.2%. And despite all the buzz about Nokia’s new Windows-based phones, the Windows operating system lost market share. During the 3 months ending in January, just 4.2% of the 30,000 smartphone subscribers surveyed by ComScore were using Windows phones, down from 5.2% in the previous 3 months.
Despite the rich graphics and amazing apps available for today’s smartphones, ComScore says texting is still by far the most popular activity for mobile subscribers, after voice calls. 75% of mobile subscribers said they texted on their phones, while just 49% downloaded apps or used a web browser. The other most common activities were accessing a social network or blog (37%), playing games (32%) and listening to music (25%).
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