In fact, when you compare the three month period ending in April 2013 to the three month period ending in February 2013, Windows Phone actually grew over 36% in terms of market share in the United States. To be fair, even with that growth, Windows Phone still only occupies a mere 5.6% share in the American smartphone market, but that’s a pretty sizable improvement over the 4.1% it had previously. To put that in perspective, RIM stayed steady at 0.7% and Symbian, oddly enough, increased from 0.1% to 0.3%. The growth of Windows Phone can largely be attributed to Nokia and its launch of the Nokia Lumia 620, as well as its wider availability of the Lumia 820 and Lumia 920. And then there is low-cost Lumia 520/521.

As far as Android and iOS are concerned, Apple fell from 43.5% to 41.4% and that’s probably because we’re still waiting on a new iPhone refresh later this year. By contrast, Android grew slightly from 51.2% to 51.7% and this trend may continue when the numbers for the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S 4 come through. In any case, even though Windows Phone is a distant third, it has clearly established itself as the obvious third.

[Source]

The post Windows Phone Grew Over 36% in US Market Share Last Quarter appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Apple is still top dog when it comes to tablet market share, a pretty impressive feat for a company with only 2 tablet models to choose from, however they aren’t sitting quite as pretty as before as their share has slipped while rivals begin to catch up.

When the ‘tablet wars’ kicked off, the Apple iPad seemed all but unbeatable, but times have changed and the iPad mini came a little late to the party giving the likes of Samsung, Amazon, Asus and others the chance catch up with their pint-sized offerings. The shift in market share is quite dramatic with Apple slipping from a 65% share at the start of 2012 to just under 40% this year. In second place Samsung enjoys a 18% market share, with Asus and Amazon making up the rest and Microsoft coming 5th with 1.8%.

From what we have been seeing Apple’s share will continue to slip unless they really do something special with the iPad 5 and iPad mini 2, but even then it won’t be easy, as a new Nexus tablet is expected soon, along with more Samsung tablets on the way.

[ Source ]

The post Apple’s Tablet Market Share Slips, Samsung on the Rise appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Even though the iPhone continues to be the talk of the town, iOS actually lost 3.5% market share in the United States compared to the same period last year. By contrast, Android gained nearly 6% market share compared to last year. A big part of this growth can be attributed to Samsung, surely, but companies like Huawei are making a lot of headway too.

But what if we go beyond the two biggest elephants in the room to look at the other operating systems? It looks like the partnership with Nokia is working, because Windows Phone went from 2.7% to 4.1% market share. Considering that no other platform was able to break the 1.0% mark for the 3 month period ending February 2013, that’s quite the accomplishment. If Kantar’s information is correct, Windows Phone is the clear number three in the smartphone race right now. Blackberry OS suffered a heavy blow, as expected, dropping from 3.6% to just 0.7%, despite the push they had with BB10 and the BlackBerry Z10.

Globally, iOS is more or less holding steady with some small gains and losses, but Android has a definite upward trend. This can largely be attributed to people who are leaving legacy platforms — like Symbian — behind. Several former BlackBerry users are jumping to Android, too. Perhaps the biggest hit for BlackBerry is in Great Britain where its market share fell from 16.8% in 2012 to just 5.1% in 2013. Ouch.

[Source]

The post Kantar Worldpanel: Android and Windows Phone Gain Market Share appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

While we may not necessarily be all that surprised that Android was the most popular Android platform of the bunch, taking home nearly three-quarters of the market is still quite the feat for Google and its hardware partners. There were some pretty great launches leading up to Q4, like the Nexus 4 and the Galaxy Note II, but I imagine an even bigger part of that has to do with some of the more budget-friendly models that sport Google’s mobile OS.

What’s interesting is that when you account for all mobile phones, and not just smartphones, Android still made up 34 percent of phones shipped during that period. Out of every three phones shipped, one of them was running Android. I’m guessing it helps that several prepaid carriers have a cheaper Android smartphone option. These entry-level devices help to encourage those who are still using “feature phones” to get into the world of smartphones. You can’t say the same about iOS or Windows Phone.

[Source]

The post 70% of Smartphones Shipped in Q4 2012 Were Android appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Even though the Huawei products may not exactly be the flagship smartphones offered by your local cell phone carrier, Huawei has made its presence known and let’s not forget about the massive market that it can enjoy in its home China. Indeed, Huawei’s year-over-year change for units shipped in Q4 was a remarkable 89.5%. That being said, it still only has a 4.9% overall market share as of Q4 2012.

The overall smartphone market continues to grow, so even though the market share numbers have only moved a few percentage points, the year-over-year change for units shipped has increased almost across the board. Samsung is sitting in the top spot with 29.0% market share with a 76.0% increase in units shipped. Apple is second with a 21.8% market share and a 29.2% increase in shipments. Sony is fourth with 4.5% market share and interestingly enough, another Chinese company, ZTE, rounds out the top five with its 4.3% market share.

Yes, Apple and Samsung continue to dominate the smartphone world with a combined 50% of the market and Huawei is a distant third with its 4.9%, but it really is amazing how this seemingly “second tier” brand has propelled itself onto the smartphone podium in such a short amount of time. Remember that they’re beating out what we may otherwise consider to be heavy hitters like HTC, LG and Motorola.

[Source]

The post Huawei Propels Itself to Become 3rd Biggest Smartphone Maker appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Last month, a report was issued saying that iOS had a 48.1% market share when it came to smartphones, compared to the combined 46.7% enjoyed by Android devices. The lead was slight, but it was there. Now, a more recent report is saying that the iOS market share has increased to 53.3%. The assumption is that this has to do with the launch of the iPhone 5, despite the many troubles that it has faced. Android’s market share shrank to 42% over the same period.

The outlook is that the iPhone’s smartphone market share will continue to rise in the US now that it’s broken the 50% mark. It should be noted that Android is still much larger elsewhere, though, getting 61% of the smartphone market in Europe.

Interestingly, it’s possible that Android will continue to shrink in the US as some people make the switch to Windows Phone 8. After all, it’s the same companies — HTC, Samsung, etc. — that are doing both WP8 and Android. And then there’s Nokia with WP8, too. It should also be noted that these figures are for smartphones only. It appears clear enough that the iPad continues to dominate the tablet arena for now.

[Source]

The post iOS Smartphone Market Share Breaks 50% in US appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The NPD Group just did a little bit of market research and while it found that there was a 9 percent growth in smartphone unit sales in Q2 2012 compared to the same time last year, that growth was driven by increases in prepaid smartphone sales and not the on-contract variety. In fact, sales of post-paid smartphones remained flat.

“Prepaid smartphones are no longer just cheap, also-ran options, focused on older and less capable phones,” said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at The NPD Group. “As the smartphone market matures, and as growth slows, carriers have been smart to aggressively market some of their best current smartphones on a pre-paid basis to a new set of customers, in order to keep sales humming along.”

Not surprisingly, Apple (31%) and Samsung (24%) are leading the charge in terms of market share, followed by HTC (15%), Motorola (12%) and LG (6%). You can pick up cheaper variants of the Samsung Galaxy series, for instance, on a prepaid basis. Of course, they’d prefer if you bought a Galaxy Note or a Galaxy S III, but they want to keep putting new phones in your hands.

While prepaid smartphone sales continue to increase, I haven’t found that wireless carriers are getting much more competitive to capture this growing market. Let’s not forget that AT&T no longer allows GoPhone customers on per-day or per-minute prepaid to purchase prepaid data packages. In order to do that, you need to be on a per-month prepaid plan.

The post Prepaid Phones growing fastest in the Smartphone arena appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

This comes by way of Statcounter and it looks at the week of May 14 to May 20, 2012. During that time period, Chrome had a higher traffic share than IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera, or any other web browser. More tech-savvy people have a higher likelihood of using Chrome, but regular consumers still dominate the market of course.

In North America, Internet Explorer (37%) is still the leading browser (Chrome has 26%). The same can be said in Asia where IE has over 50% in Japan and nearly three-quarters in China and South Korea. IE continues its massive lead in Oceania too, whereas Firefox is the leader in Europe. So, where is Chrome making up its numbers? As it turns out, South America is where it’s at: Chrome has nearly a 50% market share there and along with incremental growth everywhere else, that was enough to dethrone Microsoft’s browser.

[Source]

The post Google Chrome Becomes Most Popular Browser in the World appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

It may not be completely fair to say that China is still an emerging market. I’d say that it has already emerged, having just overtaken the United States in smartphone usage. Yes, China is now the largest smartphone market in the world and it has one billion mobile subscribers in total if you could non-smartphones too.

Considering that the total population of China is estimated at about 1.4 billion people, that’s almost one cell phone for every citizen. China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology says that the total number of mobile phone subscribers in the country is growing at a rate of 1.18% each month. You do have to factor in that many of these citizens still live in rural communities or in poverty, so it’s more likely that some of the wealthy folk have more than one phone, but it’s undeniable that China is a market that should not be ignored by the marketing efforts of companies like Apple.

According to Catalyst, China’s smartphone market has grown a substantial 81% year-over-year, compared to just the 5% growth experience in the United States over the same time period. The rise is largely attributed to the availability of the iPhone 4S through China Telecom, helping to push China into accounting for 22% of worldwide smartphone shipments in Q1 2012. The United States was 16%. To be fair, China has about four times the population.

It’s likely that the next iPhone, whatever it’s called, is going to be available through China Mobile, the country’s largest carrier. That should increase sales and penetration even further, even though two-thirds of smartphones shipped in Q1 2012 to China were Android.

[Source]

The post China Has More Smartphone Users Than United States appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Android is on the rise. In fact, when you look at the sales numbers for Q3 2011 and compare them to the sales numbers for the same period one year prior, you’ll see that Google’s mobile operating system has effectively doubled its market share. This means that Google Android now has an impressive 52.5 percent market share. Compare that to the 25.3 percent it had in Q3 2010.

The recent report comes by way of Gartner, revealing that a total of 60.5 million Android-based smartphones were sold in the third quarter fo this year. The next closest competitor is Nokia with its 19.5 million smartphones sold, but the Finnish company lost more than half its market share compared to 2010 (16.9% vs. 36.3%). Nokia was also the overall leader in mobile sales, but again, its market share shrank from 28.2% to 23.9%.

Apple more or less held steady at 15.0% (compared to 16.6% last year), selling 17.3 million iPhones in Q3. The assumption is that people held off for a while there, waiting to get their hands on the iPhone 4S. When looking at all mobile phones, Apple only accounts for 3.9 percent, compared to the 17.8% enjoyed by Samsung and the 4.8% earned by LG.

The post Android Accounts For More Than Half Of Smartphones Sold In Q3 appeared first on Mobile Magazine.