According to ComScore, Apple has just passed LG as the second largest phone (not smartphone) maker in the United States. As of October 2012, Apple owned 17.8 percent of mobile phones, up from 16.3 percent in July. Samsung also gained a bit of marketshare, increasing its 25.6 percent share to 26.3 percent in the United States. Because of this, LG fell to third place, loosing 0.8 percent marketshare. Apple’s iPhone 5 and Samsung’s Galaxy S III were likely the reason for such a significant change in marketshare.
ComScore has also reported that both Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android have continued to gain marketshare in the smartphone world, while BlackBerry, Windows Phone and Symbian keep on falling. iOS gained 0.9 percent in marketshare while Android gained 1.4 percent. BlackBerry took the biggest loss as it fell 1.4 percent from July 2012 to October 2012. Ouch.
In the United States, all aspects from data usage to text messaging to downloading apps have continued to increase during the four month period. The biggest gainer was application downloads, which rose 1.9 percent among users. As of October 2012, 54.5 percent of all mobile phone users have used downloaded apps on their phone. The smallest gain was text messaging, which rose a mere 0.3 percent among mobile phone users. Currently, 75.9 percent of phone users send text messages.