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Apps & Software

Apple Seizes Smartphone Share From Rivals

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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iPhone6
courtesy of Apple Inc.
Google Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Android helped smartphone manufacturers to seize market share from Apple Inc. (NYSE: AAPL) for years. That trend has reversed, at least in the United States. Apple clawed back more share in the three months that ended on May 15, compared to the period ended on February 15.

According to data from comScore MobiLens and Mobile Metrix:

Apple ranked as the top OEM with 43.5 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers (up 1.8 percentage points from February). Samsung ranked second with 28.7 percent market share (up 0.1 percentage points), followed by LG with 8.2 percent, Motorola with 4.9 percent and HTC with 3.5 percent.

The products other than Apple’s use Android. However, there are enough smartphones using Android that in total the operating system maintains a modest edge. What is amazing is that the only product that uses iOS is the iPhone. Dozens and dozens of products use Android. In terms of operating system share:

Android ranked as the top smartphone platform in May with 52.1 percent market share, followed by Apple with 43.5 percent (up 1.8 percentage points from February), Microsoft with 3 percent, BlackBerry with 1.3 percent and Symbian with 0.1 percent

Once again, it is Apple that is moving forward.

Finally, the Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) app leads all apps based on smartphone market share, which shows how successful the social network has moved to mobile. Major competitor Google has fallen well behind:

Facebook ranked as the top smartphone app, reaching 70.2 percent of the app audience, followed by YouTube (59.1 percent), Facebook Messenger (52.4 percent) and Google Play (52.1 percent).

Google has not been entirely shut out of the top app list. Its Gmail, Google Maps and search products do well.

The smartphone market might have turned out to be one that was in fragments because of dozens of phones and hundreds of thousands of apps. Instead, it is controlled by a handful of companies.

ALSO READ: 4 Merrill Lynch Catalyst-Driven Stock Ideas to Buy Now

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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