Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) continued to dominate as the top smartphone maker in the U.S. with a 41.6 percent share of the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) market for the three-month period ending January 2014, according to the latest data from comScore’s MobiLens and Mobile Metrix services. Samsung (SSNLF.PK) retained its second-place ranking with a 26.7 percent share. Korea-based smartphone maker LG advanced to the third-place spot in the U.S. market for the first time, with a 6.9 percent share.
Besides maintaining its longtime lead in the U.S. OEM market, Apple also saw slight gains in its market share compared to the three-month period ending October 2013. Apple grew its OEM market share by 1 percentage point, increasing from 40.6 percent to 41.6 percent. Although Samsung remained a distant second to Apple with a 26.7 percent share, it recorded the largest sequential market share gain of the top five smartphone makers with an increase of 1.3 percentage points.
The two lowest-ranked smartphone OEMs both lost market share over the three-month period ending in January. Fourth-ranked Motorola saw its share of the U.S. OEM market slip to 6.4 percent from 7 percent in October. Fifth-ranked HTC followed Motorola with the largest percentage-point decline by going from a 6.7 percent share in October to 5.4 percent share in January.
Although Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android mobile operating system maintained its dominance of the U.S. smartphone platform market, Apple’s iOS was the only platform to gain market share during the three-month period ending in January. Apple’s iOS growth appeared to come at the expense of Android and BlackBerry (NASDAQ:BBRY).
Per comScore, every other mobile platform either lost market share or recorded flat growth. Android saw its market share decline from 52.2 percent in October to 51.7 percent in January. Similarly, third-ranked BlackBerry saw its market share slip from 3.6 percent to 3.1 percent. Fourth-ranked Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and fifth-ranked Symbian both maintained their market shares of 3.2 percent and 0.2 percent, respectively.
According to comScore’s data, the U.S. smartphone market grew to 159.8 million subscribers during the three-month period ending in January, an increase of 7 percent since October. U.S. smartphone ownership has now reached 66.8 percent mobile market penetration.
The smartphone data compiled by comScore is derived from a combination of “on-device metering with census-level data,” as well as intelligent online surveys. Per comScore, only data related to mobile phone usage on a respondent’s primary mobile phone were utilized. Data collected from U.S. smartphone subscribers ages 13 and older are included in comScore’s results.
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