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ComScore: iOS and Android market share continues to climb, RIM and Motorola continue to fall
Ready for some hardcore smartphone market share numbers? ComScore's got 'em for the three-month period ending in May 2012, and you probably won't be terribly surprised by the outcome. First, let's tackle smartphone platforms: Apple and Google posted minor increase month-over-month at 0.5 and 0.1 percent, respectively (1.7 and 0.8 over a three-month span). Microsoft (consisting of Windows Phone and Windows Mobile) didn't budge between April and May, though it nudged up a tenth of a percentage point since February. RIM dropped 0.2 percent over one month, but it already experienced a much more painful sting -- 2.0 percent -- during the three-month period. Symbian also went through similar concerns, going down 0.2 percent month-over-month and 0.4 percent since February. As for specific manufacturers, Apple once again comes out on top, adding 1.5 percent to its customer base over the last three months for a total of 15 percent share. Samsung, still leading the pack in total market share at 25.7 percent, only grew by 0.1. Given the OEM's success in deploying the Galaxy S III to every major US carrier, we suspect that number will spurt up even higher over the next quarter. Among the companies losing share: LG, Motorola and HTC, losing 0.3, 0.8 and 0.2 percent, respectively.
Visualized: The iPhone five years after launch
In case you somehow missed it, today is an important milestone in technology nostalgia: it's the fifth anniversary of the original iPhone's launch. We'll let you explore the memories of that insane day on your own terms, but ComScore has produced a visual breakdown of just how ownership has grown and shifted over the years. It's not hard to see that adoption has been on an accelerating curve, especially after the 2010 launch of the Retina display-toting iPhone 4: as of this past May, about three quarters of owners have either the iPhone 4 or the iPhone 4S. And the 2007 edition? Only two percent of all iPhone owners are still actively holding on to the aluminum-clad debut model, which suggests most would rather have Siri than reminisce. Whether you're a fan or have since moved on to a competitor, the chart is a reminder of just how far one of Steve Jobs' biggest projects has come.
ComScore: Nearly a quarter of US smartphone owners have tablets, love their video
If you've got a smartphone, it's increasingly likely that you're also carrying a tablet as a sidearm. ComScore understands that 23.6 percent of American smartphone owners also have an iPad, Kindle Fire or some other large touchscreen slab as of April. That's only 16.5 percent of all cellphone owners in the land, but that's a huge jump from 9.7 percent of smartphone owners (4.7 percent of cellphone owners) just one year earlier. And if you do own a slate, odds are that you're watching your fair share of movies and cat videos. More than half of tablet users, 53 percent, fire up the likes of Netflix or YouTube at least once a month, with almost a tenth (9.5 percent) tuning in daily. Tablet lovers are unsurprisingly three times more likely to watch than their smartphone counterparts, suggesting that it's just a short hop from buying a tablet to catching up on Daily Show episodes.
ComScore: Android's US share dips ever so slightly, iPhone slowly marching up
Here's a minor surprise: Android slipping at all in US market share. Although it saw just a tiny drop of two tenths of a point from where it was in March, and still saw a gain over January, Google's platform was down to 50.8 percent in April. Nothing dramatic enough to make Mountain View worry, as such, but definitely a sharp break from the rapid growth of last year. Apple could meanwhile claim a small victory for the month as a result by continuing to grow -- even if we wouldn't call its 31.4 percent iPhone share a revolution. Of the other platforms, only Microsoft had anything to crow about, as the Lumia 900 launch brought Windows Phone back just over the four percent mark. The positions among individual cellphone makers as a whole didn't budge in April, and whatever losses came to Android's partners in that area were spread evenly across top-dog Samsung as well as LG and Motorola. Perhaps the biggest twist was HTC holding its ground at a steady six percent, which hints that the HTC One S' arrival at T-Mobile might have been just the ticket to keeping Taiwan in the fight.
ComScore: Android tips the 51% mark in US share, iPhone nips its heels with 31%
The March smartphone market share tally for the US is in from ComScore, and it paints a familiar picture that's rosy for Apple, Google and Samsung, but not so flush-cheeked for everyone else. Android is still tops and jumped almost four points to 51 percent of new American buyers. Apple's still riding high after shipping 35.1 million iPhones, however, and moved up to 30.7 percent. As is often becoming the case, it was Microsoft and RIM that took the biggest hit, with the BlackBerry dropping as much as Android gained and tumbling down to 12.3 percent. A total of 106 million Americans had a smartphone, nine percent higher than in December, and that was mirrored in the hurt dealt out among total cellphone market share. Outside of Samsung's gangbuster run in smartphones keeping it on top at 26 percent, the only other company to move up as an individual cellphone brand was Apple, which staked out 14 percent of the US cellphone space for itself. HTC, Motorola and LG are all shedding market share, with HTC no doubt hoping that the One X and One S will turn its fortunes around pretty soon.
Mobile Miscellany: week of April 23rd, 2012
Not all mobile news is destined for the front page, but if you're like us and really want to know what's going on, then you've come to the right place. This past week, we learned that ZTE intends to release a phablet of its own, and Samsung unseated Nokia as the world's largest supplier of mobile phones. These stories and more await after the break. So buy the ticket and take the ride as we explore the "best of the rest" for this week of April 23rd, 2012.
ComScore pegs Kindle Fire at more than 50 percent of the US Android tablet market
We've seen some pretty clear indications that the Kindle Fire was rapidly gaining market share among Android tablets, and ComScore is now out with a new report that indicates it recently crossed a big milestone. According to the research firm, the Fire's market share in the US fully doubled from December to February, with it standing at 54.4 percent as of the end of the month. Counted together, the Galaxy Tab family sits in second at 15.4 percent, while the Motorola Xoom and Asus Transformer come in at 7 and 6.3 percent, respectively. Of course, the Kindle Fire isn't quite your ordinary Android tablet, so this is likely better news for Amazon than Google. In addition to that, ComScore also looked at the browsing habits of tablet users, and unsurprisingly found that larger screens tended to lead to more content consumption, with 10-inch tablets boasting a 39 percent higher consumption rate than 7-inch devices. You can find all the numbers at the source link below.
ComScore: Android's US market share passes 50 percent, BlackBerry OS and WP7 slide
Another month, another round of ComScore's US mobile studies. For the three-month average period ending in February 2012, 234 million Americans age 13 and older were found to be using mobile devices, with Samsung having its products in the hands of 25.6 percent of the American mobile market. Behind it came LG (19.4 percent, dropping from 20.5 percent), Apple (13.5 percent, a 2.3 percentage point increase), Motorola (12.8 percent, down from 13.7 percent) and HTC (6.3 percent, a 0.4 percentage point increase).Overall, 104 million people were deemed smartphone owners, representing a full four million person uptick since just last month. Over on the platform side, Android managed to surge from 46.9 percent in November of 2011 to 50.1 percent, while Apple rose from 28.7 percent to 30.2 percent at the expense of RIM and Microsoft; those two managed to lose between two and three percent of their market share over the same period, but we're guessing the tide will turn for Microsoft as soon as that hotly-anticipated Lumia 900 gets to shipping. Eager for more charts and call signs? Head on down to the source.
ComScore: US subscriber count reaches 100 million, Android and iOS use continues to climb
Oh, ComScore. Every month you come out with a new market share report for smartphones, and every month it seems to offer the same theme: Android and iOS go up, RIM and Microsoft go down. The latest report, which details the three-month period ending in January, shows an increase in Google's mobile OS of 2.3 percent while Apple jumped 1.4; conversely, RIM dropped 2 percent while Microsoft (which likely encompasses WinMo and Windows Phone) went down a percentage point. Individual OEM market share is even more lackluster: LG and Motorola dipped ever so slightly, while Apple jumped up a couple percentage points. Possibly the most noteworthy item in the report, however, is the fact that the total number of US smartphone subscribers has finally exceeded 100 million. That count appears to be growing at an incredible pace, too, so it may not be terribly long before the coveted 200 million milestone is within reach.
ComScore report finds 42 percent of US mobile users have smartphones, Android at nearly 50 percent
ComScore released its annual Digital Future in Focus report earlier this month, offering new findings on things like email and web use, and it's now out with its latest Mobile Future in Focus report, which provides a year-end wrap of mobile device use both in the US and around the world. Not surprisingly, that year was marked by the continued growth of the smartphone, with the adoption rate among US mobile users jumping from 27 percent in 2010 to just under 42 percent in 2011 (similar growth was found elsewhere, with it cracking the 50 percent mark in a few countries). Among those, Android proved to be the most popular platform with a 47.3 percent market share, followed by iOS at 30 percent and RIM at 16 percent (exactly half of what it was in 2010, with the majority of that lost share moving to Android). Incidentally, Canada was the sole country where RIM retained a lead, but just barely; it accounts for 32.6 percent of the smartphone market in the country, followed closely by iOS at 31.2 percent and Android at 27.8 percent.Breaking things down further, while Android had the largest market share among smartphones, Apple had the three biggest selling phones in the US for the year with the iPhone 4, 3GS and 4S; the BlackBerry Curve 8530 snagged the fourth spot and the HTC EVO 4G took fifth. Of course, ComScore also took a look at tablets, and found that close to 15 percent of all US mobile users owned a tablet in addition to a phone, with the iPad of course accounting for an overwhelming majority of those. Notably, it also estimates that iPads account for over half of all iOS traffic, which helped boost iOS' overall share of mobile device traffic to a whopping 90.4 percent, although it notes it expect that to decline somewhat in 2012 as devices like the Kindle Fire peck away at the iPad's dominant market share. The full report can be found at the source link below.
ComScore report finds drastic shift from web-based to mobile email among younger users in past year
ComScore released its annual US Digital Future in Focus report this week, offering a year-end wrap of many of the trends its tracked throughout the past year and a look towards the next. One of the more telling stats concerns email use among those in their teens and twenties. According to the report, web-based email use among 12-17 year olds dropped 31 percent in the past year, while use among those 18 to 24 saw an even bigger drop of 34 percent. Some of that can no doubt be attributed to Facebook and other email alternatives, but a big factor is the growth of email use on mobile devices; both of those age groups saw double-digit growth in that respect, with mobile email use jumping 32 percent among 18 to 24 year olds. In terms of sheer growth in the past couple of years, though, there's not much that matches the trajectory of tablets (obviously aided by one in particular). ComScore notes that US tablet sales over the past two years have topped 40 million, a figure that it took smartphones as a category a full seven years to reach. Another area that saw some considerable growth in 2011 is digital downloads and subscriptions (including e-books), which jumped 26 percent compared to the previous year, leading all other areas of e-commerce. The full report and some videos of the highlights can be found at the source link below.
ComScore: Android and iOS gallop ahead, US smartphone usage approaches 100 million
The latest report is in from ComScore, and as you might expect, the news is sunshine and roses for the crews at Google and Apple. Both companies platforms charted some worthwhile month-over-month gains, as Android is estimated to account for 47.3 percent of smartphones in the US, while iOS runs a strong second with 26.9 percent. Meanwhile, former BlackBerry fans continue to scatter, as the platform now accounts for 16 percent of smartphone users. Similarly, Windows Phone (and whatever's left of Windows Mobile) have taken it on the chin, and have fallen to just 4.7 percent market share. Without ever gaining much traction in the US, Symbian now makes up 1.4 percent of the smartphone pie. You'll find a quick look at the manufacturing side of the equation, along with the full ComScore press release, after the break.
Microsoft tops Yahoo in US search results for first time, according to ComScore
It very nearly caught up to Yahoo in the last round of ComScore figures, and Microsoft has now finally done it -- it can officially claim to be the number two search engine in the US. According to the research firm, Microsoft's Bing search engine and other websites fielded a total of 2.75 billion search requests in December of 2011, compared to 2.65 billion search requests handled by Yahoo -- translating to a market share of 15.1 percent and 14.5 percent, respectively. As you'd expect, that still leaves Microsoft far behind Google, which processed a whopping 12 billion search requests during the month, representing a still-dominant market share of 65.9 percent. Hit the source link below for all the numbers.
ComScore: Android up, RIM down, water wet
Stop us (oh, oh, oh stop us) if you've heard this one before, but in the world of cellphone market share: nothing's changed -- or at least almost nothing. The quarterly data from ComScore say you all still love Android and iOS only slightly more than you used to. Of the 91.4 million smartphones in the US, Google gained the 3.1 percent of the market that RIM lost, and is now inching toward controlling half the nation's phones with 46.9 percent, whilst Apple swallowed the modest gains that Microsoft and Symbian lost. Samsung remains top manufacturer in a report where the only surprise is that 72.6 percent of users send text messages, so what do the other 27.4 percent do when they've been delayed or way-laid? [Thanks, Wilson]
Apple grabs more online visitors than Walmart this season
A new report from comScore shows that Apple netted more online visitors in the U.S. in November than retail giant Walmart. Apple's sites got more than 79 million unique visitors from the U.S. compared with under 59 million for Walmart. The reason behind these numbers? iTunes downloads, Ad Age says. Neither site topped Amazon, which drew more than 112 million unique visitors and was the highest-ranked retail site on comScore's matrix, which included visitors from homes, businesses and academic networks. It'll be interesting to see how these numbers will change for this month, when people use their gifted iTunes cards and new gadgets to grab even more content from iTunes. [via All Things D]
Bing almost catches up with Yahoo! in latest ComScore US figures
Bing already claimed its title as the world's second favorite search engine, but in the US it has continued to lag in third place behind Yahoo!. The gap is closing rapidly, however, with ComScore's latest stats revealing a 15.0 percent share for Redmond versus Yahoo!'s 15.1 percent. What's more, those figures don't reflect mobile search, which must surely be a growth area for Bing as Windows Phone gathers American followers. Meanwhile, Ask Network remains static in fourth place and AOL (Engadget's parent company) comes a distant fifth -- although it did show a little growth spurt between October and November, taking 1.6 percent of the 17.8 billion recorded searches and pretending not to notice Google way up there on top. Full ranking after the break.
ComScore: Android continues to boom, RIM and Microsoft decline
Numbers, numbers, numbers. ComScore is back with a few more of them, this time covering the mobile market during a three-month average period ending in October. The results aren't going to shock you: Android not only continues to dominate the market, it's on the up-and-up. Out of 90 million smartphone users in the US, Android held strong at 46.3 percent (up from 41.9 between May and July). Apple bumped up a full percentage point, while RIM's BlackBerry OS took the largest fall from 21.7 to 17.2 percent. What about Windows Phone? Microsoft's mobile OS fell slightly from 5.7 to 5.4. Moving from mobile platforms to OEMs, Samsung was still the top vendor at 25.5 percent, though it didn't grow or diminish that number. Rounding out the top five was LG (20.6 percent), Motorola (13.6), Apple (10.8) and RIM (6.6). If more numbers are what you crave, check out the full press release -- as well as another chart -- after the break.
Apple.com fifth most-visited retail site on Black Friday
Black Friday was a successful day for online retailers. Customers spent more than US$816 million, a 26 percent increase over Black Friday 2010. Apple was one of the beneficiaries of this rise in online sales. The Cupertino company climbed its way into the top 5 and became the fifth most-visited retail website on Black Friday, says a report from Comscore. The company trailed only Target, Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Amazon. Analysts's reports on Apple's Black Friday sales were also favourable. Deutsche Bank's Chris Whitmore said Apple stores overseas had a hard time keeping the iPhone 4S in stock. Over 75 percent of stores he polled had sold their entire inventory of iPhone 4S handsets on Black Friday. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster's research suggests the surveyed Apple store(s) were selling iPads at a rate of 14.8 per hour. Macs also were popular and left the store(s) at a rate of 10.1 per hour.
YouTube got nearly 21 billion hits in a month, mostly thanks to naughty Fenton
The latest report from comScore makes for eye popping reading -- Google's video sites, of which YouTube is the most important, received 20,933,113,000 views in October. To put that into some context, that's roughly three videos watched by every person alive on the planet. According to the statistics, YouTubers spent an average of seven hours watching the month's hottest videos (such as Community's Beetlejuice easter egg and Naughty Fenton). Surprisingly, Facebook came second, but viewers spent an measly average of 18 minutes watching last night's karaoke. In other news, Hulu came top for online advertising and Vevo was the most watched partner site, you guys obviously love your Lady Gaga.
Discarded iPhones in the US
Horace Dediu of Asymco is good with numbers and his latest work uses this skill to look at discarded iPhones in the US. Dediu takes monthly comScore data and quarterly activation data provided by the wireless carriers to calculate the install base of the iPhone in the US. His number crunching and resulting graph shows the number of new activations and the calculated number of iPhones being put out of service each quarter. According to Dediu, the discard rate, which is the number of phones being discarded over the number of new phones, is 50% in the US. Most of these discards are coming from AT&T as Verizon has not carried the iPhone long enough for customers to begin replacing their handsets with a new model. Dediu claims most of AT&T's reported activations were from customers replacing iPhones and that the carrier only added one million new iPhones thus far this year. He also points out that AT&T's discard rate has skyrocketed to 81% since Verizon introduced the iPhone 4 earlier this year, a figure that suggests AT&T is adding fewer new iPhone customers now that people have a choice in wireless carriers. It's an interesting look at the iPhone that goes beyond unit sales. You can read the full report at Asymco's website.
