comScore: iPhone outgrew Android last quarter despite sales slump

Like clockwork, marketing research firm comScore released its quarterly report today on mobile and smartphone marketshare in the US. Today’s report covers the three month span between April and June.

The data comes from comScore’s intelligent online survey of a “nationally representative sample” of mobile subscribers age 13 and up. Continue reading for the results of last quarter’s research…

The first numbers we’ll take a look at are for total mobile subscribers. comScore found that Samsung garnered the lion’s share of of the US mobile market last quarter at 25.6%, though that number is down from the previous quarter. LG was next in line with 18.8%, and Apple came up third with 15.4%. Again, these numbers are for total mobile subscribers — both smart and feature phones. And to be fair, Apple doesn’t make feature phones.

These next numbers are far more important, for Apple at least, as they cover only smartphone platform marketshare. As you might have guessed, Google is still winning this race with a staggering 51.6% of the market. But surprisingly, Apple grew its marketshare by 2% last quarter, and came in second with 32.4%. RIM and Microsoft are still battling for the distant third place position, coming in at 10.7% and 3.8% respectively.

Why was it surprising that Apple’s smartphone marketshare grew? Because rumors started bouncing around last quarter that Apple was looking to release a new smartphone in the near future. This likely caused a lot of pause and hesitation for would-be iPhone buyers, and Apple considers it a factor in why its smartphone sales came up short of Wall Street’s expectations.

Both Apple and Google (well not Google specifically, but Android partners) are expected to release new handsets this fall. It’ll be interesting to see what these numbers look like after those hit the market, and especially after the highly-anticpated holiday quarter.

[9to5Mac]