NEW YORK –
Samsung and RIM have been gaining
share this year in the percentage of phones in
use by cellphone subscribers, and prepaid MVNO
Tracfone has been gaining share among top cellular-
service providers, ComScore’s consumer surveys
show.
ComScore tracks cellphone users on a continuing
basis, surveying a total of 234,000 subscribers
over a rolling three-month period. The consumers,
ages 13 and older, are asked to identify the phone
brand and carrier they use as well as what cellphone
features they use. At the end of each month, Com-
Score averages the responses from the preceding
three months.
In the average month during the three months
ending July, 23.1 percent of mobile-phone users
ages 13 and older said they use a Samsung phone,
up 2 percentage points from the three-month period
ending in January, ComScore said in highlighting
the top five market-share leaders.
LG lost 0.5 percentage point from the January results
to come in with a share of 21.2 percent. Motorola
lost 3.1 percentage points to come in with a 19.8
percent share. RIM gained 1.2 percentage points to
come in at 9 percent, and Nokia dropped 1.3 points
to 7.8 percent, ComScore said.
During the period, the only carrier to gain subscriber
share was a carrier that doesn’t operate its
own network but buys airtime wholesale from carriers
that do own their own networks. That carrier
is prepaid carrier Tracfone, whose subscriber share
rose 0.5 percentage points to 5.3 percent in the July
results from 4.8 percent in the January results.
All of the top four carriers that operate their own
networks — Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint —
lost anywhere from 0.1 percentage points to 0.3
percentage points of share between January and
July. Their relative rankings, however, remained the
same, with Verizon Wireless on top followed by
AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint and Tracfone, in that order.
ComScore also found that more subscribers
surfed the web, texted, downloaded apps, listened
to cellphone-stored music, and accessed
social networks on average during the three
months ending July than during the three months
ending January.
The biggest percentage-point increases came in
web browsing (up 5 percentage points), app downloading
(up 4.7 percentage points) and accessing
social networks (up 4.7 points).
In the July results, the non-voice feature found to
be used by the most subscribers was texting, which
was used by 66 percent of subscribers on average
each month during the preceding three-month period.
That was followed by web browsing, used by
33.6 percent of subscribers. Next came app downloading,
game playing, social networking and music
listening, in that order.
