Samsung has effectively taken control of the Android smartphone market by becoming the most successful Android OEM in the world. That’s particularly true in the U.S. where its marketshare continues to grow. In fact, the latest comScore numbers show that the U.S. is no longer an iOS vs. Android market, but rather a Samsung vs. Apple market.
December’s smartphone market statistics came out of comScore Wednesday, and the results show the U.S. market warping into a battle between the giants of mobile where there’s increasingly no room for the little guys. In fact, besides an anomaly from LG, every major smartphone manufacturer’s market share declined except for Apple and Samsung.
It should come as no surprise that Apple was the top smartphone maker in December. The company commanded a 36.3 percent share of the 125.9 million smartphones in use in the U.S. Its great adversary, Samsung, is catching up, however, as its share increased to 21 percent from 18.7 percent in September. HTC and Motorola both saw declines, while LG saw a small increase to 7.1 percent. LG’s growth is probably due to the relative success of the Nexus 4.
As for smartphone platforms, Android reigns with a 53.4 percent majority of the smartphone market. It may have a majority, but it also little growth as its control only grew by 0.9 percent. In comparison, iOS grew 2 percent from September to December to have 36.3 percent of the market. BlackBerry and Microsoft both saw declines while Symbian stayed flat.
The U.S. smartphone market is slowly becoming the battleground for Apple and Samsung as other smartphone manufacturers continue to lose more marketshare to these behemoths. I wouldn’t be surprised if consumers started associated Samsung with Android as one in the same instead of two separate entities.
