“comScore has recently updated their MobiLens and Mobile Metrix, data for US smartphone subscribers in August 2013. Many in the media picked up the point that iOS gained on Android during the month. While this is true, it has actually been going on for almost a year now,” Ben Bajarin writes for Tech.pinions. “In November, 2012, Android peaked in the US at just over 53% share. Since then it has slowly declined. During that same time iOS has been slowly growing.”
“The iPhone does not compete with the low-end, extremely low-cost, Android devices offered free by carriers or on pre-pay plans from retailers, which is why comparing the iPhone to the entirety of Android is a mistake. Rather, to get a holistic picture of what is happening, we must compare the iPhone to similarly priced products. More specifically we must compare the iPhone’s market share to that of other vendors’ products at the same price points. When we do that, we get a clearer picture,” Bajarin writes. “Below is the iPhone’s share against other devices costing greater than $400 wholesale (or offered at $99-$199 subsidized). This chart is based on sell through estimates [about which] I am extremely confident.”
“As you can see, the iPhone dominates the premium segment of the market. These estimates are prior to the launch of the iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s,” Bajarin writes. “Based on all the data I am seeing from demand and sales trends, it is hard not to conclude that iOS will overtake Android in the US in the near future – possibly as soon as the end of the calendar year. But perhaps the most important thing about the iPhone’s share in the premium devices sector is that other competitors have only been able to made weak inroads against it. Samsung, for example, has been spending hundreds of millions of dollars in US-based marketing, yet their share of the premium market has peaked and been trending downward on weaker-than-expected sales in 2013.”
More info in the full article – highly recommended – here.
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