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.
In cellphone share combining feature phones
and smartphones, LG maintained its second-place share followed by Motorola,
Apple and Research In Motion (RIM) in that order. Only Apple gained share during
the period, whereas Samsung showed no share gain and the other brands posted
slight declines. (See table.)
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).
