Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone Lose Market Share in the US

Google’s Android operating system has started to lose some ground in the United States, the latest data coming from the comScore MobiLens service shows.

In the three-month period ending January 2013, the platform went down 1.3 percentage points when compared to October 2012, ending the timeframe with 52.3 percent market share, despite the arrival of new devices on the market.

The figure refers to smartphone subscribers in the United States in said period of time, comScore notes, adding that Google’s mobile operating system still remained the uncontestable leader on the smartphone market in the country.

Sitting on the third position on the US smartphone market, BlackBerry went down 1.9 percentage points in the three-month period, now accounting for only 5.9 percent of the market.

Furthermore, Microsoft’s Windows Phone lost 0.1 percentage points between October and January, the report shows. At the moment, it accounts for 3.1 percent market share in the United States.

Interestingly enough though, Windows Phone did gain net users in the timeframe, around 360,000 of them, roughly the same as Android, which saw its user base expand by 400,000 users, as the chart below shows.

This change is due to the fact that 129.4 million people owned a smartphone in the aforementioned period of time, 7 percent more when compared to October last year, comScore notes.

Apparently, Microsoft’s big push with the Windows Phone 8 platform has started to pay off, and the availability of new devices on major wireless carriers in the country certainly helped. However, various stock issues that these devices have been plagued with might have affected platform’s performance.

comScore also notes that, while Apple kept its first position in the OEM segment in the timeframe, Samsung managed to grow to 21.4 percent market share, while HTC and Motorola both lost ground. LG, currently the fifth vendor in the US, grew 0.3 percent during this period.