Holiday season 2013 capped off another record year for tablet shipments, but market watchers are now beginning to see the rapid growth of the smartphone market reach saturation points in established markets. As these mature markets reach their peaks, the market share story is becoming cemented, though not surprising.
The latest smartphone industry number from market research firm comScore show that Apple is still on top in the U.S. market. Over 41% of U.S. smartphone subscribers (41.6%, to be exact) were using some kind of iPhone from November 2013 to January 2014. Another 26.7% were using a Samsung device and the rest were using LG (6.9%), Motorola (6.4%), HTC (5.4%), or some other brand of smartphone.
This domination by Apple and Samsung is nothing new, and those companies also dominate the mobile industry throughout the world. What is new in the latest comScore numbers is that Windows Phone has now surpassed BlackBerry in smartphone OS market share.
The comScore report shows that during the latest three-month period only 3.1% of American smartphones were running a BlackBerry OS. Windows Phone has finally edged out the Canadian company with 3.2% of U.S. smartphone users. Blackberry had still held market share over Windows Phone as of the three month period ending in October 2013 with 3.6% of the smartphone OS market. Windows Phone market share has not increased since that period.
Google’s Android, of course, still tops the OS market. Over half of U.S. smartphones (51.7%) are running some version of the Android OS. Another 41.6% are running on Apple’s iOS platform.