You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Smartphone launches sometimes have to build up steam before they can go full speed ahead. Apple might be learning this first-hand, based on ComScore’s figures. After a lackluster October, the company’s just-reported November smartphone market share in the US was up sharply, to 35 percent; while the spike isn’t directly credited to the iPhone 5, rapidly growing availability of the company’s newest smartphone certainly didn’t hurt. Android was still comfortably ruling the roost at 53.7 percent, although its share was only a slight increase over October. As such, most of Apple’s gain during the month came from smaller rivals’ pain.
It was a more familiar story among individual phone makers. Samsung had a comfortable lead at 26.9 percent of the larger American cellphone market in November, while Apple padded its advantage over a sinking LG to hit 18.5 percent. With Motorola and HTC also on the downward slide, the US market this fall was increasingly mirroring its global counterpart, where it was really Apple and Samsung’s game to play — others might have to be content watching from the sidelines in the future.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, HTC, Nokia, Google, LG, RIM
Source: ComScore
This week the folks at comScore have revealed their newest mobile device study, it covering the three months ending in November 2012. While it’s clear that of the number of US Mobile Subscribers (both smartphone and non-smartphone) ages 13 and plus here are leaning toward Android, it’s interesting to note that Apple took the place of LG in market share between here and comScore’s last study. What you’re seeing here is a 1.4 point gain from Apple to bring it up to 18.5% of mobile subscribers in the USA while LG falls 0.7%, pushing it down to 17.5%.
The top of the list in this study is Samsung with a whopping 26.9% of the mobile market, they also gaining 1.2 points compared to the study done in the three months ending in August of 2012 from comScore. The folks at comScore MobiLens have shown Samsung to be taking a sweet bunch of balloons up to the top of the charts for some time now, due in no small part to the popularity of Google’s Android mobile operating system to be sure.
These studies over time have also shown the percentage of smartphone owners to be going up, their current figures showing 53% of the mobile market (anyone with a mobile phone) as owning a smartphone. Of those US Smartphone Subscribers studied, the current top two (and rather dominant) smartphone platforms are Google (with 53.7%) and Apple’s iOS (with 35%). Both of these brands continue to gobble up the competition – their percentage continues to go up each cycle while RIM (BlackBerry), Microsoft (Windows Phone), and Symbian continue to go down.
Then there’re Mobile Content Usage, a chart that seems to keep the same numbers cycle after cycle after cycle. This 3 month period had no one question change as much as a single percentage point, the highest change being 0.9 points. If you count that and the one change that hit 0.8, you’ve got Accessing Social Networking Sites or Blogs and Downloading apps as the biggest increases heading in to 2013.
[via ComScore]
comScore pre-holiday 2012 Mobile numbers put Samsung, Google, Apple on top is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
For the first time in the history of comScore’s MobiLens U.S. mobile market share report, Apple has come in second overall among handset OEMs. Apple grew its U.S. market share by 1.5 percentage points from 16.3 to 17.8 percent in the three-month period ending October 2012, according to the report. During the same period, Samsung also saw its share grow, but only by 0.7 percentage points, from 25.6 to 26.3 percent. Apple seems to have begun narrowing the gap on the back of the iPhone 5, which went on sale in the U.S. towards the middle of the period covered by comScore’s latest report.
Apple climbed to second over LG, which saw a dip of 0.8 percentage points from 18.4 to 17.6 percent during the period. Motorola and HTC rounded out the top five, both experiencing slight drops and finishing the quarter with 11 and 6 percent of the market, respectively. Another key metric comScore found, and one which helps explain what finally pushed Apple into second place, is nearly 52 percent of all subscribers in the U.S. were on smartphones, up 6 percent from the previous quarter. Apple only sells smartphones, so its fortunes rising in lockstep with the decreasing popularity of feature phones makes perfect sense.
As mentioned, Apple also released the iPhone 5 during the quarter covered by this report. We’ve already seen from Kantar Worldpanel that the iPhone 5 propelled Apple back to the top of the U.S. smartphone charts, and it’s likely that device is also the reason Apple now comes in at number two overall among handset makers of all stripes.
Platform market share still shows Google with a commanding lead, and one which grew during the period, from 52.2 percent of subscribers to 53.6 percent. Apple also gained, rising 0.9 percentage points from 33.4 percent to 34.3 percent, while RIM was the biggest loser among the top five with a decline of 1.7 percentage points. Microsoft and Symbian round out the top five, both with minor drops in overall share.
The next quarter will be an interesting one to watch for. It covers November through January, which means that we’ll see the holiday effect on all OEMs. It also should include LG’s sales of the Nexus 4 device, which seems to be remarkably popular, or at least in very short supply. Depending on how LG allocates supply among its Optimus G and Nexus devices, we could see it claw back into second, since the gap is still quite narrow, but it has to contend with Apple’s holiday iPhone sales, which are generally very strong.
We’ve been wondering how much the first full month of iPhone 5 sales would skew US market share in October. The answer is… not much, if you ask ComScore. Android kept growing to 53.6 percent of American smartphones on the back of the Droid RAZR M, Galaxy Note II and other devices, but the iPhone’s market share just managed to remain steady at the same 34.3 percent as in September. Apple could mostly be glad that it wasn’t in the position of its older rivals: the BlackBerry dipped below 8 percent share, while the wait for a Windows Phone 8 turnaround may have triggered a sharp drop in Microsoft’s stake to 3.2 percent.
There was a symbolic (if anticipated) changing of the guard for the wider American market, however. After months of closing in, Apple just barely edged out LG to become the second-largest cellphone maker of any kind on the US stage at 17.8 percent. A familiar scenario elsewhere kept Samsung once again on top at 26.3 percent, while Motorola and HTC remained on a downward slide. We’ll be keeping a close eye on how the November results alter the status quo — between Windows Phone, LG’s Optimus G and a cavalcade of multi-device launches, there’s been potential for more than one tidal shift in the mobile world in the past few weeks.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, HTC, Google, LG, RIM
Source: ComScore
There’s no arguing that the mobile market is here for the duration and that it’s Android and Apple’s iOS that are dominating the field – this three-month-average comScore report shows that much clearly. What’s not quite as clear is how two major manufacturers – Apple and Samsung – are swallowing up the market while LG, Motorola, and HTC (the other top three manufacturers in the market today) are dropping down. Oddly enough, it’s not more than a point difference between months that’ve changed this month other than Apple – they being the only manufacturer to gain more than a single point of the % of mobile subscribers.
The charts this month show Samsung up top with an absolutely dominating 26.3% of the OEM market share, that being part of this study that’s a 3 month average ending in October 2012. The chart you’re seeing compares to a 3-month average ending in July of 2012, the point changes being compared therein. Also of note is the fact that this study is done on US Mobile Subscribers working not just with smartphones, but feature phones as well, and all of them 13 years of age or older. Not that there’s a gigantic amount of 8 year old smartphone users out there, but still – keep that in mind.
The Samsung share here went up between periods just under 1 percentage point at 0.7 while Apple went up 1.5 points. Apple’s share here sits at 17.8% and it’s quite likely that their percentage went up largely because of the launch of the iPhone 5, but it’s not entirely clear if those questioned were asked if they’d actually had their iPhone in-hand when asked – that could have a small but significant effect on the outcome of this test because of the amount of people that ordered the iPhone 5 at launch and had a brief waiting period in the three months this study takes place in (if they didn’t have an iPhone before now, that is).
Meanwhile the LG, Motorola, and HTC shares have been going down, with LG in the lead for loss as well as market share at 17.6% after a loss of -0.8 points. Motorola’s share this period sits at11% and HTC exists at the end of the list with 6%. Not included due to what we must assume is extremely low numbers is Nokia and RIM with BlackBerry.
Interestingly it does seem that RIM does exist in a low bot not nearly so insignificant place in the Top Smartphone Platforms list with 9.5% of the market to their name. Apple and Google (with Android) sit up top with a total 87.9% of the market to themselves, with 53.6% of the market belonging to Google and 34.3% of the market belonging to Apple. Meanwhile Microsoft is in 4th place with a tiny 3.2% of the market and Symbian (believe it or not) still exists on the list with a fabulous 0.6% of the market.
In the Smartphone Platform Market Share list it’s also Apple and Google that are devouring the market bit by bit with Google going up by 1.4 points and Apple heading upward by 0.9 points. Meanwhile RIM took the biggest dive with a loss of 1.7 points and Microsoft and Symbian slipped by 0.4 points and 0.2 points respectively.
[via ComScore]
comScore: Samsung and Apple syphon mobile market is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Considering the parody-worthy dangers of America’s busiest shopping day, it’s no surprise to hear that online consumerism is on the rise. According to ComScore, 57.3 million Americans took their wallets to digital storefronts on Black Friday, spending a record $1.04 billion in the process. “With Black Friday online sales up 26 percent and surpassing $1 billion for the first time, coupled with early reports indicating that Black Friday sales in retail stores were down 1.8 percent, we can now confidently call it a multi-channel marketing phenomenon,” stated ComScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni. The organization also noted that digital content sales are on the rise, too, citing a 29 percent increase in the category over the same period last year. Finally, Fulgoni projected Cyber Monday sales in excess of $1.5 billion, based on observations culled from the years past. Read on for ComScore’s official numbers.
Continue reading ComScore: Black Friday online spending rings in at a record $1.04 billion
Filed under: Misc
Internet marketing research company comScore has just released a report today saying that Samsung is currently the top handset manufacturer with a 26 percent market share. Fellow Korean electronics conglomerate LG is at the second spot with 17.7 percent while Apple is closing in at 17.5 percent. Motorola and HTC bagged the 4rth and 5th spot with 10.9 percent and 6.2 percent, respectively.
comScore surveyed more than 30,000 mobile subscribers in the U.S. within a three-month period that ended last month and saw the smartphone penetration growing past the 50 percent threshold. When it comes to platform market share, Google Android grabbed the top spot with 52.5 percent market share while Apple’s platform only managed to own 34.3 percent. RIM ranked third with 8.4 percent share, followed by Microsoft (3.6 percent) and Symbian (0.6 percent).
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Samsung Galaxy S3 mini firmware released, Verizon Galaxy S3 Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update leaked,
We’re so used to constant flux in smartphone market share that it’s a surprise when things don’t move. Yet that’s what we’re facing today. ComScore found that the US smartphone field in September was virtually unchanged from where it was in August, even down to smaller players like Symbian and Windows Phone. Accordingly, Android still ruled the roost at 52.5 percent, while 34.3 percent were iPhone adopters. It’s difficult to say whether or not the iPhone 5 had a tangible impact — while Apple had banner sales in the last several days of September, we don’t know to what extent that was offset by people holding off from buying an iPhone 4S.
Overall cellphone sales showed some of that more reassuring give and take. The positions remained the same, but the US was once again a painful market to be in for anyone that isn’t Apple or Samsung. Apple crept up to within a stone’s throw of toppling LG at 17.5 percent to its rival’s 17.7, while Samsung’s successful shift to smartphones helped it keep exactly 26 percent of the mobile sphere. We’re most curious to see how October shakes out: between a full month of iPhone 5 sales and the Droid RAZR HD, we may learn that the calmness of September was just a momentary illusion.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Apple, Samsung, HTC, Nokia, Google, LG
ComScore: US smartphone share leveled off in September, Android and iPhone continued their reigns originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Nov 2012 12:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Analytics firm comScore has delivered its latest search engine rankings, and it probably isn’t going to surprise you at all to hear that, for the month of September, Google remained the reigning king. The big G actually enjoyed a 0.3 percentage increase from August to September, climbing from 66.4% explicit search share to 66.7%. Others enjoyed small gains too, including Ask, which was up 0.3% itself, from 3.5% share to 3.8%.
Even AOL, which is teetering on the brink when it comes to search market share, made the tiniest of gains, rising one-tenth of a percentage point to 1.8%. Microsoft’s Bing, which is Google’s largest competitor, held steady between August and September 15.9%, so while it isn’t a gain, it’s certainly better than a loss. Sadly, the same can’t be said for Yahoo, which was the only engine comScore is showing a loss for.
Between August and September, Yahoo’s market share actually fell 0.6 points, dipping from 12.8% to 12.2%. It isn’t the biggest loss – not by a longshot – but the struggling Yahoo needs all the help it can get in the search department. comScore says that right around 16.53 billion searches were made in September, which is down about 4% from August’s 17.04 billion. Almost all of the search engines that were tracked in comScore’s report suffered a decline as a result of that drop – with Yahoo in particular getting hit the hardest – but interestingly, Ask was the only one to make gains in explicit search queries, gaining 3% over August’s results.
So, even though Ask is a long way away from being able to challenge Google for search share (or Bing for that matter), September was a pretty good month for it. In any case, comScore’s report indicates that Google doesn’t have to worry about having its title taken away any time soon, though the fact that Bing is holding steady while Yahoo is losing a small amount of market share has to be encouraging for Microsoft. Be sure to have a look at our story timeline below for more reports from comScore!
Google makes small gains in latest comScore search rankings is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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