The latest survey from Nielsen, a snapshot of the U.S. smartphone industry as of May 11th, shows a renaissance of sorts for the Apple iPhone. Android powered smartphones hold a commanding lead in U.S. market share with 38% of the total, up from the 36% reading seen in the three months ending in April. The Apple iPhone gained 1% over the same time period to grab a 27% share of the U.S. smartphone market, but more importantly, the latter device was the only phone to gain share in the last three months among recently purchased smartphones.
Android and Apple both gained share in the U.S. in the last 3 months at the expense of RIM
Of those phones recently purchased in the last three months, the Apple iPhone had a 17% share, up sharply from the 10% reading from the three months ended in mid-April. During that period, Android's share was flat at 27% meaning that the iPhone is currently driving the market in the U.S. RIM's share of newly acquired devices was just 6%, off sharply from the previous survey's reading of 11%. Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 accounted for just 1% of new purchases. In an interesting breakdown, 55% of all new handsets bought in the three months to May 11th were smartphones while the 45% balance belonged, obviously, to featurephones. 15 months ago, featurephones accounted for a whopping 68% of newly acquired phones.
Returning to current market share, after Android and Apple, RIM comes in third with a 21% slice of the U.S. smartphone pie. This is a 2% drop from the prior report and is obviously affecting the Canadian based company. As we recently reported, there is speculation that the BlackBerry manufacturer has scrapped plans to build a 10 inch PlayBook tablet and will focus instead on a Superphone using the QNX OS. Among other operating systems. Windows Phone 7 has 19% of the market while defunct Windows Mobile still controls 9%. HP's webOS and Symbian each account for 2% of the market.
Alan, an ardent smartphone enthusiast and a veteran writer at PhoneArena since 2009, has witnessed and chronicled the transformative years of mobile technology. Owning iconic phones from the original iPhone to the iPhone 15 Pro Max, he has seen smartphones evolve into a global phenomenon. Beyond smartphones, Alan has covered the emergence of tablets, smartwatches, and smart speakers.
A discussion is a place, where people can voice their opinion, no matter if it
is positive, neutral or negative. However, when posting, one must stay true to the topic, and not just share some
random thoughts, which are not directly related to the matter.
Things that are NOT allowed:
Off-topic talk - you must stick to the subject of discussion
Offensive, hate speech - if you want to say something, say it politely
Spam/Advertisements - these posts are deleted
Multiple accounts - one person can have only one account
Impersonations and offensive nicknames - these accounts get banned
Moderation is done by humans. We try to be as objective as possible and moderate with zero bias. If you think a
post should be moderated - please, report it.
Have a question about the rules or why you have been moderated/limited/banned? Please,
contact us.
FCC OKs Cingular\'s purchase of AT&T Wireless
Things that are NOT allowed: