On Friday comScore released its latest US smartphone market-share data (February 2015). It asserts that 76.6 percent of the US mobile subscriber population now owns a smartphone. That will easily take us to 80 percent or beyond by year end.
The data also show Samsung losing market share vs. November 2014 and LG gaining. Operating system market share numbers are relatively static.
I’ve graphed comScore smartphone OEM and operating system market share data for the past three years. What the chart below shows is modest growth by Apple devices and stronger growth by Samsung, which has now slowed. With the exception of LG all other major brands have lost share over the period.
By comparison the chart below shows three years of operating system market share data from comScore. Android is relatively flat with iOS showing slightly more growth between 2013 and 2014 but slower growth between 2014 and 2015. BlackBerry has seen steady declines and Windows Phones saw very small gains over the three years.
In contrast to the above, Kantar data show wilder swings (below). December 2014 Kantar data assert that the iOS and Android had equal shares of the US market. Yet three months later (February 2015), the firm asserts that a nearly 17 point gap has opened up between Android and iOS.
This rapid swing suggests the Kantar data are not as accurate as comScore’s. While the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus saw a surge of sales during the holidays and new Android devices (e.g., Galaxy S6) may now be selling well, this movement in the Kantar numbers in three months is simply too large to be reflective of the real “facts on the ground.”
Back to the comScore data; I’ve compared the firm’s Top 15 Apps charts from February 2014 and 2015. Apps that appear in 2015 that were not on the list the year before include Amazon, Google+ and Snapchat (just entering the chart). Apps that were there in 2014 but are no longer include Yahoo Stocks, Yahoo Weather and the Weather Channel app.
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