The comScore figures for September 2013 are out as they track the latest trends in the U.S. smartphone industry. There are really no surprises, but it is still nice to boast that as far as operating systems go, Android is on top, while on the manufacturing end, Apple still outsells Samsung. Some 147.9 million people in the U.S. own a smartphone, which is 62-percent of the mobile market, and this is up 4.5-percent since June 2013. The rise in smartphone use is not surprising as the carriers continue to move away from “full-featured,” or as I like to call them, “dumb” phones. The price of low-end and midrange smartphones continues to drop, as well as “share everything” plans makes it much easier to add a smartphone.
The chart above clearly show us that Google’s Android with 52-percent and Apple’s iOS with 42-percent lead the U.S. in market share when it comes to the operating systems – together they hold almost a 94-percent share of the market. Amazing, yet disturbing, when it comes to competition and innovation – what gives Google and Apple incentive to get better? Certainly the competition between those companies is legendary, but another real player would be nice. It certainly will not be BlackBerry, which dropped from 4.4-percent in June to 3.8-percent just three months later. The only other real player is Microsoft, but even they only gain .2-percent to go up to 3.3-percent.
When it comes to worldwide sales, Samsung smothers the competition, but when it comes to the U.S., Apple, with 41-percent, still dominates Samsung at 25-percent, but Samsung did gain 1.2-percent since June, while Apple gained .7-percent. Samsung may show a gain with the next quarterly report since their Galaxy Note 3 was released the first week of October, after this survey was completed. HTC lost 1.4-percent from June to end up at 7.1-percent, and I doubt that their latest phone, the HTC One Max, will make much of an impact on next quarter’s numbers. Motorola, saw a small .4-percentage drop to hold on to a 6.8 percent of the market, followed closely by LG, with no change, at 6.6-percent.
Since comScore also takes a survey based on applications, I figured we could throw it in to show that Google Sites ranked number one as the top web property (mobile browsing and app usage) on smartphones at a whopping 90-percent! Facebook comes in second with 84-percent, Yahoo Sites at 82-percent, Amazon Sites at 66-percent, and rounding off the top five is Apple at 51-percent. You can take a look at the others if you choose to do so. On the right you can see where the individual apps rank as well.
Let us know in the comments or on Google+ what you think about these figures and if you were surprised by any of them