Apple, Android Continue to Lead Smartphone Market: comScore

Apple ranked as the top smartphone manufacturer with 41.6 percent original equipment manufacturer (OEM) market share, while Google’s Android operating system (OS) led as the top smartphone platform with 51.7 percent platform market share, according to the January comScore MobiLens and Mobile Metrix reports.

Behind Apple, Samsung ranked second with 26.7 percent market share (up 1.3 percentage points), followed by LG with 6.9 percent (up 0.3 percentage points), Motorola with 6.4 percent and HTC with 5.4 percent.

Android ranked as the top smartphone platform in January with 51.7 percent market share, followed by Apple with 41.6 percent (up 1 percentage point), BlackBerry with 3.1 percent, Microsoft with 3.2 percent and Symbian with 0.2 percent.

Google Sites ranked as the top Web property on smartphones, reaching 89.4 percent of the mobile media audience (mobile browsing and app usage), followed by Facebook (86.6 percent), Yahoo Sites (86.2 percent) and Amazon Sites (69 percent).

Facebook ranked as the top smartphone app, reaching 77.6 percent of the app audience, followed by Google Play (52.4 percent), YouTube (49.7 percent) and Google Search (48.9 percent).

Overall, 159.8 million people in the United States owned smartphones (66.8 percent mobile market penetration) during the three months ending in January, up 7 percent since October.

Android and Apple’s iOS smartphone operating systems accounted for 95.7 percent of all smartphone shipments in the fourth quarter of 2013, and for 93.8 percent of all smartphone shipments for the year, according to a February report from IT research firm IDC.

While Android relied on its long list of OEM partners, a diverse collection of devices and price points that appealed to a range of market segments, Apple’s iOS relied on precisely the opposite approach–a limited selection of Apple-only devices, whose prices trended higher than the rest of the competition.

Although smartphone market growth remained strong in 2013, the report noted that the era of double-digit annual growth has only a few years remaining. In the meantime, handset vendors are doing all they can to capture demand while it is still present.

The report also noted that while worldwide smartphone marketing campaigns continue to stay focused on flagship devices like the iPhone 5S, Galaxy Note 3, and the HTC One, yet research shows that consumer buying is rapidly shifting toward products with significantly lower price points.

In addition, the smartphone market passed an important milestone in 2013 when worldwide shipments surpassed the 1 billion mark for the first time, driven by continued momentum from Android and iOS.