Apple Continues to Win Smartphone Maker Race

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

For all of its trouble, based on worries that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) has lost its magic and can no longer build iPhones that will create huge sales, there is a strong case that it has lost very little ground in the smartphone business, at least in the United States.

New data from comScore shows that:

145 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones (60.8 percent mobile market penetration) during the three months ending in August, up 3 percent since May. Apple ranked as the top OEM with 40.7 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers (up 1.5 percentage points from May). Samsung ranked second with 24.3 percent market share (up 1.3 percentage points), followed by HTC with 7.4 percent, Motorola with 6.9 percent and LG with 6.7 percent.

There is, of course, an army of Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) Android smartphones that want to knock Apple from its perch, but for the time being, if the new iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C do well, it may be able to hold its own. The early evidence of whether this will work is mixed. Sales have begun well, but discounting has started to spread, and in some cases it is steep.

The OS battle in another thing altogether. Given that it only makes iPhones, Apple’s market share is impressive. However, the multiplying impact of Google sales has begun to overwhelm the old “House of Jobs.”

Android ranked as the top smartphone platform in August with 51.6 percent market share, followed by Apple with 40.7 percent (up 1.5 percentage points), BlackBerry with 4 percent, Microsoft with 3.2 percent (up 0.2 percentage points) and Symbian with 0.3 percent.

To Apple’s credit, it is still a race. Android has done well, but not well enough. Apple actually may have fewer problems and more advantages than the market wants to admit.

Top Smartphone OEMs
3 Month Avg. Ending Aug. 2013 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending May 2013
Total U.S. Smartphone Subscribers Age 13+
Source: comScore MobiLens
Share (%) of Smartphone Subscribers
May-13 Aug-13 Point Change
Total Mobile Subscribers 100.0% 100.0% N/A
Apple 39.2% 40.7% 1.5
Samsung 23.0% 24.3% 1.3
HTC 8.7% 7.4% -1.3
Motorola 7.8% 6.9% -0.9
LG 6.7% 6.7% 0.0
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.

Featured Reads

Our top personal finance-related articles today. Your wallet will thank you later.

Continue Reading

Top Gaining Stocks

CBOE Vol: 1,568,143
PSKY Vol: 12,285,993
STX Vol: 7,378,346
ORCL Vol: 26,317,675
DDOG Vol: 6,247,779

Top Losing Stocks

LKQ
LKQ Vol: 4,367,433
CLX Vol: 13,260,523
SYK Vol: 4,519,455
MHK Vol: 1,859,865
AMGN Vol: 3,818,618