Steve Jobs has been quoted to have said that he would spend all the money Apple earned to destroy Android, and while Apple are on their way to combating the mobile operating system, US sale figures suggest that they still have some way to go, as reported by ZDNet.
Samsung retains the top position for phone sales in the United States, as the results from comScore suggest. The company retains its 25.5% share of the mobile market, showing no gains or drops in their position. Apple"s position has gained a little due to the release of the iPhone 4S and some phone owners switching to it, but the dent it has made may not be the one Apple wanted. Had an iPhone 5 been announced instead, the results could have been radically different.
comScore also states that nearly a third of the United States population owns a smartphone, which is a 10% increase over the previous three-month period. Analytics from the rival firm Nielsen say that Google and Apple retain the two top spots within the phone market, leaving Microsoft and Nokia fighting an uphill battle alongside RIM. Of the mobile operating systems used across the United States, Android is also said to have come up top by comScore.
The predicted results were an explosion in the popularity of iOS due to the excellent sales of the handset in its first week on sale, but the iOS popularity has grown by a single percent. While Android is still at the top, Apple"s actions against Samsung mean that some people may want to move from their current handsets due to uncertainty about the future of the devices they own and whether they can be supported or not.
Edit: As giga pointed out in the comments, comScore does not differentiate between smartphones and other handsets from the same manufacturer. Therefore it could be taken that the stats are slightly skewed, though not biased. Apple"s position could be higher if only smartphone sales were counted.