Android Holds 51% Share of Smartphone Operating Systems

Companies and Brands

Published: October 7, 2015 7:55 am

While sales of the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone 6 models have swamped the competition, the market share of Google Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Android operating system is more than 51% of the market. Android-powered smartphone models number in the dozens, however. Apple’s iOS is only available in Apple products.

According to comScore:

Android ranked as the top smartphone platform in August with 51.7 percent market share, followed by Apple with 44.1 percent (up 0.6 percentage points from May), Microsoft with 2.9 percent, BlackBerry with 1.2 percent and Symbian with 0.1 percent.

The data also show how far Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) has to go to take an even modest part of the market.

Apple did hold a huge lead in the number of people who owned the smartphones themselves. Its share was 44.1% in the period from June through August. Major rival Samsung’s share of smartphone subscribers was 27.4%. The time when Samsung products sharply outsold Apple’s ended in a matter of just two years. The only other company with a meaningful share of the smartphone market was Korea’s LG at 9.1%.

For apps used on smartphones, the dominant ones were from Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB). The social media company already has 1.2 billion members worldwide. Among the top 15 apps, Facebook’s share was 75.4%, followed by Facebook Messenger at 59.8%. The next apps by market share were Google products: YouTube at 59.5%, Google Play at 52.1%, Google Search at 51.4%, Google Maps at 50.1% and Gmail at 43.8%.

Perhaps the dominance of Android has helped Google’s success in app use.

ALSO READ: Apple Named Top Corporate Brand With $170 Billion Value

Covered by the survey were 191.1 million people in the United States who owned smartphones (77.1% mobile market penetration) during the three months ending in August.

Top Smartphone OEMs 3 Month Avg. Ending Aug. 2015 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending May 2015 Total U.S. Smartphone Subscribers Age 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens
	Share (%) of Smartphone Subscribers
	May-15	Aug-15	Point Change
Total Smartphone Subscribers	100.0%	100.0%	N/A
Apple	43.5%	44.1%	0.6
Samsung	28.7%	27.4%	-1.3
LG	8.2%	9.1%	0.9
Motorola	4.9%	4.7%	-0.2
HTC	3.5%	3.4%	-0.1

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