Google’s Android remained the top smartphone platform in the U.S., as measured by subscribers, but Apple’s iPhone closed a noticeable piece of the gap with a surge in subscribers during the critical holiday shopping period.
That is a key takeaway from Comscore’s new data on the U.S. smartphone market, which shows Apple rising to 41.8 percent market share for the three months ending in December, a 1.2 percentage point increase compared with the three months ending in September.
Android, meanwhile, slipped to 51.5 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers, down 0.3 percentage points over the same time period.
Comscore’s numbers show Microsoft’s Windows Phone declining 0.2 percentage points, to 3.1 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers — underscoring the challenge facing new Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella as he tries to make Microsoft a more credible player in the mobile market.
Apple said last month that it sold 51 million iPhones in the December quarter, up from 47.8 million iPhones a year ago, following the release of the iPhone 5S.
Here is Comscore’s chart showing the top U.S. smartphone platforms. See the company’s news release for more.
