Thursday, October 6, 2011

U.S. market share stats are in: Google’s future is bright, RIM’s not so much


comScore published its latest findings for mobile subscriber market share in the U.S. and discovered that once again, Samsung is the number one mobile phone manufacturer by the numbers. At the end of August, the company claimed a 25.3 percent of the entire mobile market, or approximately one-fourth. This is up 0.5 percent from May.
Next in line is LG with exactly 21 percent, down from 21.1 percent, so overall it’s pretty steady. After that comes Motorola, which surprisingly saw a decline of 1.1 percent to 14 percent. Apple as usual saw gains, this time an increase to 9.8 percent from 8.7. Finally, we get to RIM. This sad company is shedding more tears as they fall one percent to 7.1 percent market share. Granted, this isn’t all that bad considering Apple is only slightly ahead, but the future is not bright for RIM.
In the smartphone segment, Google is dominating with a cool 43.7 percent market share. I applaud its incredible 5.6 percent gain overall in just three months. Apple follows behind with a 27.3 percent share, up from 26.6 percent. Expect a boost once more this quarter thanks to the iPhone 4S. RIM, Microsoft, and Symbian each lost a piece of the pie this time around, with their percentages now at 19.7, 5.7, and 1.8, respectively. In the three month time span, RIM lost a full 5 percent cut.
At the end of August, there were 84.5 million smartphone users in the United States according to comScore. In the previous three month period, there were approximately 75 million. As smartphones slowly take over the world, the winners and losers are becoming more clear. Google’s Android has won the OS race, Apple has won the hardware race for smartphones, and Samsung wins the hardware race for mobile phones in general. RIM, well, lost. But this is a technology market we are talking about, and things can (and do) change rapidly.

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