It's always fun to look back at a previous year and see what kinds of smartphones were the most popular. comScore has released their data about popular smartphone platforms from a three-month period ending in November of 2012, studying about 30,000 phones. There's plenty of interesting information, but it's mostly what we've expected. Samsung and Apple continue to dominate smartphone sales, with LG, Motorola, and HTC rounding out the top 5. (Sony is apparently not faring as well in the States.) Both Samsung and Apple are still growing over this three-month period, with Samsung starting with 25.7% and ending with 26.9%, and Apple starting and ending with 17.1% and 18.5%. LG actually started off this period with 18.2% but slipped to 17.5%, giving Apple the number 2 spot. Motorola fell about 0.8% to 10.4% and HTC fell 0.4% to 5.9%, but neither moved up or down the charts. None of the percentages are drastic, but it just backs up what we already know and expect from the smartphone market.
Android still powers over half of the 123.3 million phones in the US, and grew from 52.6% to 53.7%, and Apple's iOS claims about 30%. Neither Android or iOS fell in market share; their positive growth came from eating up what's left of RIM, Microsoft, and Symbian software. It's not good news for Microsoft's new Windows 8, but I don't think any of us were too worried about those tiles messing up our little green friend, were we?
There's also a third chart that shows what people do with their phones, which surprised me a bit to learn that only 28% of people use their phone to listen to music. Hit the source below if you want to get into more of the nitty-gritty statistics.
source: comScore
