There's no doubt that the Android mobile operating system has seen immense global success and is currently still the most popular smartphone OS on the planet. However, when switching from software to hardware, there's an entirely different story with market share. Despite iOS staying at a firm number two, in the U.S. Apple continues to dominate the market among other vendors. In fact from Q4 2012 to Q4 2013, its share grew 7 percent to 42 percent total.
Samsung, being the top manufacturer of Android phones, has actually seen slowed growth in America. It grew to 26 percent market share from the year-ago quarter. While growth is by no means a bad thing, the fact that Samsung couldn't match Apple's growth puts it in a worse position than it was in before.
In addition to the lack of momentum in the U.S., Samsung also dropped to number two in smartphone market share in China, where Xiaomi now dominates. It'll be interesting to see how 2014 turns out for Samsung and whether Q4 2013 foreshadowed what's to come for the popular phone manufacturer, or if it was simply just a small misstep.
The only other vendor to see (a small amount of) growth in its U.S. market share was LG, while Motorola, Blackberry, HTC, and the aggregated "Other" all now have an even smaller slice of the pie.
Source: TechCrunch | Image via Apple
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