comScore data shows Android losing a tiny bit of market share to iOS

BY Stefan Constantinescu

Published 5 Apr 2013

comScore uses a large sample of continuously updated data to estimate which smartphones are currently being used in the United States, Western Europe, and a handful of other territories. Their numbers are held in high regard, so I’m going to share their latest figures.

In you live in the US and own a smartphone, then in February of this year there was a 51.7% chance that said phone ran Google’s mobile operating system. That number is down from 53.7% in November of last year. Meanwhile, iPhone ownership during has increased from 35.0% to 38.9% during the same span of time.

Why is this happening? My gut tells me this has everything to do with the holiday shopping season. Little Johnny asked mommy and daddy for a new phone, and we all know what phone he wants, right? The iPhone, of course. The Galaxy S III is too old, the Note II may or may not be too big, and the HTC One, in December 2012 at least, was nothing more than a rumor.

I’m tempted to say you shouldn’t care about the United States too much, since China has the largest smartphone market and the European Union has a population of over half a billion, but then again I recognize that a large chunk of the app developer community lives in FreedomLand.

That means they’re going to write apps for the phones they see around them.