The statistics for the SmartPhone market in March are in from comScore and there has been some interesting movement which should have everyone paying attention. First, Apple gains 2.7 points to further improve their lead as the top SmartPhone maker. Samsun also made slight gains as the second leading manufacture. Virtually all other SmartPhone makers slipped in the first quarter of 2013.
More interesting to many, however, is the fact that Apple’s percentage of the SmartPhone operating system also went up by 2.7 with Google’s Android OS slipping by 1.4%. Blackberry continues to drop, this quarter by 1.2% to only 5.2% of the entire market. Microsoft moved up slightly to 3% of the total market as they continue to push the new Window’s Phone’s aggressively. With this slight jump there may still be hope for them to overtake Blackberry and secure their presence in this very lucrative industry.
Another report which came out recently from Kantar has quite different numbers, however, showing a tighter race between Google and Apple and having Windows overtaking the Blackberry OS in the US market. Time will tell which of these ratings are more accurate, but it is certain that there is some significant movement, especially for times when there have been few major new phone releases occurring. Once the Galaxy S4 and iPhone 5s are released it may be a turbulent time in this market.
While all the major SmartPhones and operating systems today have apps available to run sites like Facebook and other websites it will be important for marketers to have a good understanding of which types of phones are most popular. As more and more people are moving away from traditional PCs and becoming more mobile this is an essential area of the market to stay up to date on for everyone in marketing.
For the foreseeable future, however, it looks like this market will continue to be dominated by Google and Apple, though with the deep pockets of Microsoft there could be some big changes around any corner.
What do you think? Will Android continue to be the number one OS? Will Apple be able to maintain their lead on total SmartPhone sales? The second quarter of 2013 will certainly be interesting in terms of mobile devices and their impact on other markets.
