Reston, Va. – Apple’s smartphone OS gained share at a slightly faster pace than Google’s Android OS among U.S. smartphone subscribers in the three months ending August compared with the preceding three-month period, ComScore found.
Android, however, remains the top smartphone OS used by smartphones subscribers, and compared with the year-ago three-month period, Android increased its share among smartphone users at a slightly faster pace than Apple did, ComScore said.
In surveying more than 30,000 mobile phone users during the three-month period, ComScore found that Android increased its share among the smartphone user base by 1.7 percentage points to 52.6 percent from the preceding three months, while Apple increased its share by 2.4 percentage points to 34.3 percent (see PDF). Research In Motion’s (RIM) share fell again, this time to 8.3 percent from 11.4 percent on a sequential basis, and Microsoft lost 0.4 percentage points to come in with a 3.6 percent share. The Symbian OS share fell to 0.7 percent from 1.1 percent.
Year over year, Android posted slightly stronger share gains than iOS, rising 8.9 percentage points to 52.6 percent compared with iOS’s gain of 7 percentage points to 34.3 percent. RIM fell off a cliff on a year-over-year basis, dropping 11.4 percentage points to 3.6 percent. Microsoft lost 1.1 percentage points year over year to 3.6 percent.
Among cellphone brands, Samsung remained tops in market share among all cellphone users, with 25.7 percent share in the three months ending August (see second PDF). That was flat on a sequential basis but up from the year-ago 25.3 percent. LG remained in second place on a sequential and year-over-year basis, though its share slipped sequentially by 0.9 percentage points to 18.2 percent. Its share on a year-ago basis also slipped, falling from 21 percent.
Apple increased is brand share among cellphone users on a sequential and year-ago basis, with share rising sequentially by 2.1 percentage points to 17.1 percent and on a year-over-year basis by 7.3 percentage points to 17.1 percent. Motorola remained in fourth place on a sequential basis but slipped from third place on a year-over-year basis. For its part, HTC remained in fifth place on a sequential basis, gaining 0.2 percentage points to come in with 6.3 percent share. A year ago, RIM was fifth in brand share.
In other findings, ComScore found that cellphone penetration stagnated on a year-over-year basis at 234 million Americans ages 13 and older, but smartphone penetration rose 37.9 percent year over year to 116.5 million people, up from a year-ago 84.5 million. Smartphone penetration rose sequentially by 6 percentage points.
ComScore also found that people are using their phones more often for text messaging (75.6 percent, up sequentially by 0.8 percentage points), downloading apps (53.4 percent, up sequentially by 2.3 points), browsing the web (52 percent, up 2.2 points), accessing social-network sites (38.3 percent, up 1.6 points), playing games (34 percent, up 0.5 points), and playing back music (28.3 percent, up 1.3 points).
