Google, Apple Continue to Dominate Mobile OS Market
Mobile phone industry tracking firm comScore issued a report Tuesday on first-quarter market share for Mobile operating system developers and smartphone manufacturers. The report showed that Apple, Google and Samsung continued to flourish in the first three months of 2012, while RIM, Microsoft Motorola each losing ground. The market share of the Symbian OS was unchanged from the previous three months to last quarter.
As far as the mobile OS market is concerned, Google’s Android platform increased its dominant market share by 4 points versus 2011’s fourth quarter and now controls 51 percent of the market, followed by Apple, which sold 35 million iPhones in the quarter to come in with a 31 percent market share. As has been the case a lot in the last couple of years, Microsoft and RIM lost share to account for Google and Apple’s gains. Black Berry finished March with a market share of just over 12 percent.
At the end of the first quarter, a total of 106 million Americans owned smartphones, an increase of 9 percent from the beginning of the year. Samsung continued to top the world in terms of smartphone sales, with a 26 percent market share, and Apple stayed in second with a 14 percent piece of the pie. Motorola, LG and HTC all lost market share in the most recent quarter.
