It’s now a two-way race for control of the U.S. smartphone market and long-time No. 2 player Research in Motion finds itself being lapped by Apple.
The iPhone maker took second place during the May quarter, iOS increasing its share to 26.6 percent, while the BlackBerry maker fell to No. 3, shedding 4.2 percent to 24.7 percent. Android remains in first place in the U.S. smartphone market with 38.1 percent, according to market researcher comScore.
Along with success in smartphone platforms, the Cupertino, Calif. company also showed hardware gains in an otherwise flat or depressed market. Apple gained 1.2 percent, rising to 8.7 percent from 7.5 percent. Meanwhile, the tech giant’s latest courtroom nemesis, Samsung – the market leader – displayed no growth, the report announced. In fact, LG was the only non-iOS or non-Android handset that grew at all…but only at a fractional 0.2 percent.
Today’s report is just the latest sign Apple is making headway against Android in the United States. Earlier, a report found the iPhone was preferred by new U.S. smartphone buyers over Android. The surge coincided with the addition of Verizon Wireless offering the Apple handset. The news prompted some experts to believe Google’s initial domestic market growth was due to lack of iPhone availability, rather than inherent consumer demand for Android.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
