Strategy Analytics: Apple top phone maker in US for Q4

Android and iOS are locked in a tug-of-war that has been going on for a few years and competing OSes are falling to the wayside. Samsung (the biggest Android player) and Apple (the only iOS gadget maker) are busy fighting it out too and Strategy Analytics is keeping score.

In the US, Apple became the top phone vendor during the Q4 – that’s a first for the company. It shipped 17.7 million phones for a whopping 34% of the market (a big jump from 25% in Q4 2011).

Samsung took second place in Q4 with 16.8 million phones shipped. Looking at the whole year, however, Samsung takes top place with 53 million phones over Apple’s 43.7 million. LG is third with 20.5 million (4.7 million of which were shipped in the last quarter of 2012).

All three companies shipped more phone in Q4 last year than they did in Q4 2011 and the market grew 4% year over year. However, the previous three quarters were weak and the market contracted from 186.8 million phones for the whole 2011 to 166.9 million in 2012 (that’s for feature and smart phones).

Anyway, the smartphone wars are even more intense in China – there Android and iOS conquered 98% of the smartphone market in Q4. Of that, Android holds a dominant position with 86%, while iOS has 12%. Note that Android numbers include lots of modified versions specific to the Chinese market.

Source 1 | Source 2