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LG picks up US smartphone crumbs, gains on Apple and Samsung
Cupertino's iPhone 6 bounce starts to wear off
Apple and Samsung are still the category-killers in the US smartphone market, but LG has managed to peel a small sliver of market share from both in the September quarter.
That's what emerges in data from Comscore, whose September 2015 numbers show that Apple and Samsung each shed 0.5 per cent US market share, picked up by LG which added 1.1 per cent of smartphone subscribers.
September 14 | July 15 | September 15 | |
---|---|---|---|
Apple | 41.7% | 44.1% | 43.6% |
Samsung | 29.0% | 28.1% | 27.6% |
LG | 6.9% | 8.3% | 9.4% |
Motorola | 5.4% | 4.9% | 4.8% |
HTC | 4.4% | 3.4% | 3.3% |
Apple's iPhone 6 – launched in September 2014 – clearly gave Cupertino wings for a while, but as the table above shows, that boost has plateaued.
With LG picking up the pieces, the total Android market share grew slightly year-on-year. Comscore gave it 52.1 per cent of the market at this time last year, and this year it's 52.3 per cent, while iOS in its various flavours slid slightly to 43.6 per cent.
Microsoft's share of mobile operating systems remains a dismal third, at 2.9 per cent, with Blackberry at 1.2 per cent.
Facebook and Apple dominate the non-Google apps installed on smartphones, as Comscore's table (below) shows.
Top 15 Apps | % Reach | |
---|---|---|
1 | 76.2% | |
2 | YouTube | 61.0% |
3 | Facebook Messenger | 60.9% |
4 | Google Play | 52.2% |
5 | Google Search | 51.2% |
6 | Google Maps | 49.8% |
7 | Gmail | 42.8% |
8 | Pandora Radio | 42.6% |
9 | 38.6% | |
10 | Yahoo Stocks | 32.2% |
11 | Apple Music* | 32.1% |
12 | Apple Maps | 29.3% |
13 | Amazon Mobile | 27.6% |
14 | 25.2% | |
15 | Google Drive | 24.4% |
Top-15 apps by reach, according to Comscore.
Since Google gets to ship whatever it likes with Android, it's hardly surprising that the Chocolate Factory holds six places in the top 15. Apple clearly needs to try harder to load up its iPhones with cruft. ®