U.S. Smartphone Wars: Apple Increases Lead Over Archrival Samsung Reveals New Data
The rivalry between the two of the biggest smartphone makers on the planet is legendary. While Samsung continues to remain the world’s biggest phone maker, the same success seems to have eluded the Korean giant from the all-important U.S. market. In the U.S., Apple continues to dominate the smartphone sales chart, with the iPhone still being the preferred smartphone for a large percentage of the populace.
According to new data from media and analytics company comScore, for the three months that ended July, Apple dominated the sales charts in the U.S. with a 44.2 percent market share. This is up marginally from 43.1 percent for the three months prior to that. Samsung, on the other hand, lost marginally and saw its market share slide from 28.6 percent to 27.3 percent. In a distant third place is Korean phone maker LG, which now holds 8.7 percent of the U.S. smartphones market. HTC and Motorola also get honorable mentions in the top five list that comScore released.
While Apple continues to sell well in the U.S., the combined market share of Android phones in the country is still greater than that of iOS-laden devices. Google’s Android operating system currently holds 51.4 percent of the smartphone market share. This is down 0.8 percent from April 2015. The iOS operating system managed to gain slightly and finished at second place with 44.2 percent of the smartphone OS market share. The rest of the players in the field continued to struggle. Microsoft’s Windows Phone lost slightly and finished with 2.9 percent of the market, while BlackBerry OS languished at fourth place with 1.3 percent. The surprise element was the 0.1 percent share that Symbian OS still holds.
For Samsung, it has been a difficult two years, as many of its flagship devices failed to deliver. Last year’s Samsung Galaxy S5 and its successors, the Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 Edge, did well, but actual sales fell short of expectations. Samsung also faces competition in other markets from upstart companies like Xiaomi, One Plus, and others from emerging markets. The overall result is that Samsung reported its seventh straight drop in quarterly earnings for the second quarter of 2015. With Apple also treading on to Samsung’s big-screen domain with the launch of the iPhone 6 Plus last year, people who wanted a phablet-sized device from Apple were no longer required to opt for Samsung.
Apple is expected to announce new iPhone models just a few days from now, and if they turn out to be attractive devices for smartphone buyers in the U.S., we may see Apple increase its clout even further in the next few quarters.
What do you think will happen?
[Image Via Wikimedia Commons]
