Apple trims Android’s U.S. smartphone lead as Verizon sells most iPhones

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Apple is making a slight dent in Android’s lead among U.S. smartphone owners, picking up more than three percentage points of market share at the end of the June 2013 quarter. By comparison, Google’s mobile software slipped a bit, giving up almost one percent, according to new research.

By the end of the June quarter, Apple’s iOS had 42.5 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, up from 39.2 percent a year earlier. By contrast, Android fell to 51.5 percent from 52.6 percent during the same period, according to research firm Kantar Monday…

Perhaps the most interesting bit is the per-carrier breakdown of iPhone vs. Android sales. According to Kantar – and based on 240,000 interviews per year with mobile phone users – Verizon remains Apple’s best source for carrier sales of the iPhone, registering forty percent of its U.S. iPhone sales.

This is interesting because you’ll remember Verizon has said it has had trouble meeting its iPhone sales promise, potentially owing Apple $14 billion for unsold handsets.

Long-time iPhone carrier AT&T sold just a hair fewer iPhones, registering 39 percent of Apple sales during the quarter ended June. Sprint and T-Mobile rounded out the U.S. iPhone carriers, selling ten percent and eight percent, respectively.

As for Android, it sold 35 percent of devices on the Verizon network, seventeen percent on Sprint, sixteen percent on AT&T and thirteen percent on T-Mobile.

Kantar noted that U.S. women and featurephone owners upgrading to smartphones were a large portion of Verizon’s iOS sales.

When looking at the consumers purchasing from Verizon currently, we see a lot more females and those upgrading from a feature phone to an iOS device compared to other carriers.

Microsoft gained some much-needed good news, its Windows Phone capturing four percent of the U.S. smartphone sales, up from 2.9 percent a year earlier, according to Kantar.

Although Verizon also lead other U.S. carriers in Android handset sales, Sprint had the second-largest percentage of smartphones in the U.S. powered by Google’s software, at seventeen percent.