Apple and Samsung continue to solidify their dominance of the smartphone market, according to the latest MobiLens report from comScore. The iPhone 5 helped Apple boost its market share to 37.8% of U.S. smartphone subscribers for the 3 months ending in January, up from 34.3% in October. Samsung increased its share to 21.4% from 19.5%.
HTC, which consistently comes in third in smartphone OEM rankings, had a 9.7% share during the most recent period, followed by Motorola and LG. Nokia and BlackBerry did not show up on the list of the top five manufacturers, but of course BlackBerry and Windows are still in the top five when it comes to operating systems. Just under 6% of smartphone subscribers were using BlackBerry, and just over 3% were using Windows phones.
Google’s Android OS had more than half the subscribers, with 52.3% share. While that’s significantly higher than Apple’s 37.8%, these numbers do not measure user engagement with the operating system, which is key to helping carriers increase average revenue per user. Studies of user behavior have shown iOS users downloading more apps and media than users of Android devices. This is partly attributable to demographics; iOS users tend to be higher-income subscribers who are able to spend more on new apps and services.
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