Nearly 200 million people across the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in January, a 79.1% U.S. smartphone penetration rate, according to comScore’s latest MobiLens and Mobile Metrix. Apple’s smartphones continued to be the leading brand, while Google’s Android remained the top smartphone OS.
Apple’s smartphone OEM market share rose 0.3% over the three-month period to 43.6% of U.S. smartphone subscribers. Second ranked Samsung racked up a 28.5% market share, a 0.6% gain from October. LG ranked third with 9.6%, Motorola fourth at 5% and HTC fifth with 3.2%.
Smartphone ¨Ecosystem¨ Providers’ Dominance
Turning to smartphone platforms, Android accounted for 52.8% of the U.S. market, down 0.1 percentage point from October. Apple ran second, gaining 0.3 points to end the period with a 43.6% market share. Microsoft’s 2.7% market share earned it a third place ranking. Blackberry ranked fourth at 0.8%, down 0.2 points.
Facebook and Facebook Messenger were the two most popular smartphone apps from November through January. The former reached 78.4% of the U.S. iOS and Android smartphone mobile media users 18 and over and the latter 64.1%.
Google smartphone apps took the next five positions. YouTube ranked third with a smartphone audience reach of 61.1%. Google Play followed at 51%.
Google Search, Google Maps and Gmail ranked fifth, sixth and seventh, respectively, with market reaches of 50.2%, 48.7% and 44.8%.
Pandora Radio’s 43.3% U.S. smartphone Android and iOS audience reach was good enough for eighth place. Instagram ranked ninth with 39%. Rounding out comScore’s latest quarterly top 10 was Amazon Mobile with a smartphone audience reach of 33.4%.
