2012 was called the year of Android by many, and according to recent statistics, that appears to hold true. ComScore on Friday released data for November 2012 that shows Android still leads the way as the top operating system. Google’s O.S. rose 1.1 percent from 52.6 in August to 53.7 percent in November. iOS saw an increase from 34.3 percent in August to 35 percent in November. RIM fell 1 percent, while Microsoft and Symbian both saw minimal decreases.
As far as manufacturing goes, Samsung had a solid increase, going from 25.7 percent t0 26.9 percent. Apple, however, saw the biggest increase, going from 17.1 to 18.5 percent. Motorola saw the largest drop, with LG coming in a close second, and HTC falling just .4 percent.
ComScore also published a breakdown of how U.S. mobile subscribers use their smartphone. Text message use rose negligibly to 75.9 percent. The biggest increase came in the use of social networks, which increased from 38.3 percent to 39.2 percent. The only usage to decrease was playing games, which fell .3 percent to 33.7 percent.
In a report published separately by Reuters, Strategy Analytic claims Samsung will continue to expand its lead over Apple in the new year. “We expect Samsung to slightly extend its lead over Apple this year because of its larger multi-tier product portfolio,” executive director at Strategy Analytics, Neil Mawston says. He says that Samsung “plays in more segments” than Apple, meaning that it has a wider variety of products aimed at many different budgets and preferences. “Samsung plays in more segments and this should enable it to capture more volume than Apple (assuming Apple does not launch an ‘iPhone Mini’ this year),” Mawston said. Mawston projects Apple’s smartphone sales will reach 180 million this year, up 33 percent from last year, but still slightly trailing Samsung’s 35 percent increase, who is expected to sell 290 million devices.
He also expects smartphone shipments in total to jump 27 percent to 875 million shipments this year, which is a slower pace than the 41 percent jump we saw last year. Mawston blames the slower growth on easing growth in China, North America, and the developed countries of Asia.