Google’s mobile operating system is now on the majority of smartphones in the US.
Android has long held a majority of the smartphone market on a global scale, since Apple’s iPhone platform has a proportionally less greater impact in several regions around the world.
In the US, though, the Google platform has never been able to clinch that 50% milestone. Until now, that is. The latest data from research group Comscore shows that as of February, Android holds a 50.1% market share.
The iPhone chimes in with 30.2% of the market, followed by Blackberry at 13.4%, Windows Mobile/Windows Phone at 3.9%, and Nokia’s legacy Symbian platform still powering 1.5% of US smartphones.
In the three-month period ending February, Comscore says 234 million Americans over the age of 13 owned a mobile device, a 14% growth over the previous three months.
A significant majority of new mobile phone purchases in the US are now smartphones, with less powerful “feature phones” only accounting for about a third of newly activated mobile phones in the country.
Of course, the most popular individual smartphone was the iPhone, by a long shot. Android is able to command a majority of the market because it has become the de facto smartphone platform.
However, there is no single Android phone that is the defining device, meaning that customers who want a unified experience still go to the iPhone, although there is starting to be some fragmentation there, with iPhone apps that only work for certain versions of the phone.
Nevertheless, according to the latest data, 48% of new smartphone purchases in the last three months chose Android. 43% chose the iPhone.
