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Samsung ousts Apple as top US smartmobe biz

Two phone makers carve up the market

In figures for the three months to the end of May, Kantar Worldpanel says that Samsung took a bite out of Apple's US market share to overtake the fruity firm. This is as much down to continued strong sales of the Galaxy S5 as to the introduction of the Galaxy S6.

Carolina Milanesi, Chief of Research & Head of US Business, told El Reg "Samsung is unusual in that their devices always have a longer life." The top five phones are:

  1. Apple iPhone 6
  2. Samsung Galaxy S5
  3. Samsung Galaxy S6
  4. Apple iPhone 5S
  5. Apple iPhone 6plus

The research company says that 94.4 per cent of customers were upgrading from a previous smartphone, with only one in twenty people being new to smartphones. It seems that people are enamored of the S6 camera, with 49 percent of Galaxy S6 customers giving that as the reason for buying the phone – so you have to wonder why they didn't go for a Lumia or Sony, both of which have better cameras. 48.9 per cent were motivated by the clarity and resolution of the screen, and 45.9 per cent found the large screen size decisively convincing.

From a carrier perspective, 30.6 per cent of the consumers who bought a Samsung Galaxy S6 in April and May were Verizon subscribers, 27.2 per cent were with Sprint, and 26.6 per cent with AT&T.

At point of sale, Verizon stores represented 24.8 per cent of Samsung Galaxy S6 sales, AT&T accounted for 22.2 per cent, and Best Buy made up 23.7 per cent. Buyers said that their purchase was influenced by "a good deal on the price of the phone" (37.8 per cent), "heard or read good things about it" (35.2 per cent), or "saw an advertisement" (21.8 per cent).

The strength of Samsung has helped Android OS continue to reclaim market share in the US, where it has increased by 2.8 percentage points to 64.9 per cent. However, Android is not showing much improvement in the Europe "big five," where it dropped 2.9 percentage points, compared to the same period in 2014. Europe's big five markets are Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

"The first full month of sales of the Galaxy S6 allowed Samsung to regain the market lead in the US and grow its share of Android sales from 52 per cent in the three months ending in April to 55 per cent for the three months ending in May," reported Milanesi. "Samsung's year-over-year performance also improved, with its US market share now down only 0.5 percentage point compared to 1.6 percentage points in the three months ending in April."

But it's not all sweet for Android. Milanesi added "Other tier-one Android players, such as HTC and Motorola, had a more difficult period, with their share decreasing both year-over-year and period-over-period, raising hopes for competitors – such as Huawei and Sony, who have yet to wow US consumers – that share could be up for grabs."

But it might not be the established players that benefit. The Chinese market may signal the rising dragons who are yet to make an impact in the rest of the world. "In urban China, the two-horse race became a three-horse race, as the market leader Apple, followed by Huawei now at number two and Xiaomi in the third spot, are all within a 0.5 percentage point share of one another," said Tamsin Timpson, strategic insight director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech Asia. "While share might be close, each vendor's customer base is quite different. Xiaomi and Apple capture the more affluent users."

All of this is bad news for Qualcomm. Xiaomi has just signed to take the MediaTek ten core Halo 20 processor for its flagship phones. Samsung and Apple both use their own internally designed processor. Huawei uses its own chip set too, all of which makes Qualcomm look a bit billy-no-mates; maybe Qualcomm is counting on Windows mobile to make a showing. ®

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