ComScore: Samsung, Android Maintain Top Share

By Joseph Palenchar -- TWICE, 2/3/2012

Reston, Va. - Samsung maintained its lead in cellphone handset share among the installed base of cellphone subscribers in the fourth quarter compared with the third quarter, and both the Apple and Google Android smartphone platforms made share gains at the expense of the BlackBerry, Microsoft and Symbian platforms, a ComScore survey of cellular users found.

The statistics are based on a three-month average ending December compared with a three-month average ending September. ComScore surveyed more than 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers during the periods.


The survey concluded that 234 million Americans age 13 and older use mobile devices, and 97.9 million people owned smartphones, representing 40 percent of all mobile subscribers.

Samsung ranked at the top in cellphone share with 25.3 percent of subscribers, followed by LG with 20 percent, Motorola with 13.3 percent share, Apple with 12.4 percent share (up 2.2 percentage points), and RIM coming in fifth with 6.7 percent share.

Among the installed base of smartphone subscribers, the Android OS ranked on top again, with 47.3 percent of subscribers, up 2.5 percentage points from the third quarter. Apple held onto its second-place share while expanding its share by 2.2 percentage points, to 29.6 percent. RIM ranked third, but its share slipped 2.9 percentage points, to 16 percent share, followed by Microsoft with 4.7 percent share and Symbian with 1.4 percent share.

Among all cellphone users, ComScore found that people increased the frequency with which they used their phones to text, used downloaded apps, browse the web, listen to music and play games.

In the fourth quarter, 74.3 percent of subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device, up 3.2 percentage points. Downloaded apps were used by 47.6 percent of subscribers (up 5.1 percentage points), while browsers were used by 47.5 percent (up 4.6 percentage points). Accessing social-network sites or blogs increased 3.8 percentage points, to 35.3 percent of subscribers. A total of 31.4 percent of subscribers played games on their phone, while 23.8 percent listened to music on their phones (up 2.9 percentage points).