iOS Gains U.S. Market Share

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According to the latest report from comScore, Google’s Android is still the top mobile operating system in the U.S., but Apple’s iOS is making gains. Apple is the most popular smartphone maker in the country, followed by Samsung.

AppleInsider’s Kevin Bostic reported, “The launch of the iPhone 5, combined with the continuing popularity of the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4, allowed Apple’s iOS to grow by 3.5 percentage points in the U.S. market, taking share away from Google’s Android OS. comScore’s new report covers the three-month period ending in January 2013. The report shows Apple retaining the top spot in the U.S. among smartphone manufacturers, with 37.8 percent of the market, up 1.5 points from December of 2012.”

InformationWeek’s Eric Zeman added, “Samsung landed in second place as far as hardware makers go. Again, ComScore didn’t provide specifics on individual device sales, but noted that Samsung’s share of the U.S. smartphone market grew from 19.5% in October to 21.4% in January. Samsung’s climb was more modest than Apple’s, at 1.9 percentage points…. Together, Apple and Samsung represent 59.2% of all the smartphone hardware sold in the U.S.”

PCMag’s Chloe Albanesius noted, “On the OS front, Google’s Android was still the most popular, running on 52.3 percent of U.S. smartphones, but that was down a slight 1.3 percent. Apple actually ended up with the same OS market share as smartphone market share – 37.8 percent, which was also up 3.5 percent. None of the other smartphone OSes saw any growth in recent months; BlackBerry was down 1.9 percent to 5.8 percent (BlackBerry 10 handsets are set to be released in the next few weeks), Microsoft dropped 0.1 percent to 3.1 percent, and Symbian continued to disappear, also dropping 0.1 percent to 0.5 percent of smartphones.”

Mashable’s Stan Schroeder observed, “Things might change due to the new BlackBerry Z10 and Nokia’s recently announced Lumia 520 and 720, but for now, Windows Phone and BlackBerry are slowly but surely bleeding market share.”