US smartphone market: Apple beating Samsung, Android ahead of iOS and Facebook dominates apps

Apple remains ahead of Samsung but Android is beating iOS in terms of smartphone marketshare, while Google and Facebook are dominating the app market, according to new figures from the US.

Overall, the comScore US marketshare figures show 145 million Americans owned a smartphone during the quarter to August, representing 60.8% of the US market. This is up 3% quarter-on-quarter.

In terms of smartphone handset manufacturers Apple remains the market leader with 40.7%, ahead of Samsung on 24.3%, HTC on 7.4%, Google/Motorola on 6.9% and LG on 6.7%.

However, the dominant platform is Android with a marketshare of 51.6%, ahead of Apple on 40.7%.

Embarrassingly, Blackberry is still ahead of Windows Phone in its home market, with BlackBerry claiming 4% marketshare compared to 3.2% for all versions of Windows Phone.

The figures show Facebook is the most commonly installed app, appearing on 75.7% of all smartphones in the US.

It is followed by Google Search (53.9%), Google Play (53.2%), YouTube (52.8%), Google Maps (46.1%), Gmail (44.3%), Apple’s app suite (44.1%), Pandora (43.3%), Yahoo! Stocks (31.5%) and Apple Maps (27.5%).

Interestingly, Microsoft has no entries in the top 15 mobile apps.

Meanwhile, the company with the largest reach (in other words, at least one of its apps installed on a users’ phone plus mobile web marketshare) is Google, which has had 92.2% of all US smartphone users using at least one of its mobile products.

It is followed by Facebook (84.6%), Yahoo! (83.2%), Amazon (68.6%), AOL (50.7%), Apple (50.4%), Microsoft (46%), Wikimedia Foundation (45.3%), Pandora (43.2%) and eBay (37.4%).