One in four U.S. phones is a Samsung; BlackBerry, Motorola losing ground
comScore statistics released today suggest that one in four phones in the United States is a Samsung device.
Over the course of the last three months, comScore surveyed over 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers and found samsung to be the top handset manufacturer -- taking nearly a quarter of the marketshare.
Apple, however, has just short of 10 percent, with the iPhone.
In the research, 234 million Americans over the age of 13 have a mobile device. Nearly a third of this have smartphones, running advanced mobile operating systems like iOS and Android.
Samsung gained a whole percentage point, while Apple gained even further from April through to July.
Research in Motion, the BlackBerry maker, however, dropped over half a percentage point, and took only 7.6 percent of the overall marketshare. But though the BlackBerry lost ground, it is still worth remembering that it holds fifth place among the top handset manufacturers.
Looking at the mobile operating system marketshare, BlackBerry OS also lost out -- directly relating to the drop in handsets -- by 4 percent.
Like BlackBerrys, with a combined operating system and handset, Apple's iOS remains steady gaining one percentage point, proportional to Apple's gain in the handset marketshare.
But Android is still taking the United States by storm, with two out of every five phones now running Google's mobile operating system -- up by over 5 percent.
Considering Samsung's close ties with Android, it should not come as too much of a surprise that when either hardware or software gains in share, the other will follow.
Interestingly, Windows Phone 7 lost ground by one percentage point -- and lands itself at fourth place. Even with the Mango upgrade just around the corner, it seems Windows-running phones are losing out to firmly established operating systems. But the Mango update could bump up its market share.
Further statistics show that everything from browser usage to listening to music is more popular than a few months ago -- with text messaging topping the mobile content usage score at 70 percent.
Downloading applications from application stores proved to be the most popular increase, raising its share from 37.8 percent to 40.6 percent -- ranking at the third most popular activity to action on a mobile device.
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