News
Android Market Share Continues Strong Growth
- By Chris Paoli
- July 7, 2011
According to a comScore report for a three-month period ending in May, Google's Android OS devices claim 38.1 percent of all smartphones owned in the U.S. This accounts for a jump of 5 percent over the previous three-month period.
Apple, which has claimed second place in the U.S. market, slightly increased its share by 1.4 points during the same three-month period to settle at 26.6 percent. Research in Motion, makers of the BlackBerry OS, saw the largest significant drop of 4.2 percent and sits at third place with 24.7 percent. Microsoft continues to struggle with its Windows Phone 7 platform, carving out 5.8 percent of the market -- edging out Palm's bottom-of-the-list total of 2.4 percent.
The digital analytics group surveyed more than 30,000 smartphone subscribers in the United States to find that 76.8 million people in the country now own a smartphone device -- an increase of 11 percent over the preceding three months.
As for smartphone device manufacturers, Samsung's leading 24.8 percent market share for the three months ending in May stays constant with comScore's previous findings from February. LG also stayed fairly constant, gaining .2 points and settling at 21.1 percent -- good enough for second place. Apple's iPhone brand experienced the largest growth for the period, jumping 1.2 percent for a total market share of 8.7 percent.
comScore also surveyed smartphone users' habits and concluded that 38.6 percent of owners used downloaded apps and 26.9 percent played downloaded games. These categories still fall short to the No. 1 mobile content usage activity of text messaging, which 69.5 percent of all smartphone owners say they participate in.
Mobile OS Platform |
Market Share (December 2010 - February 2011) |
Market Share (March 2011 - May 2011) |
Percentage Change |
Google Android OS |
33.0%
|
38.1%
|
+5.1 |
Apple iOS |
25.2%
|
26.6%
|
+1.4
|
RIM BlackBerry OS |
28.9%
|
24.7%
|
-4.2
|
Microsoft (Windows Phone 7, Mobile 6.x) |
7.7%
|
5.8%
|
-1.9
|
Palm OS |
2.8%
|
2.4%
|
-0.4
|
Table data courtesy of comScore