Motorola Maintains Mobile Subscriber Market Share Lead
Despite a slight dip in its market share percentage, Motorola still led all mobile OEMs in U.S. subscriber market share during Q4 2009, according to the comScore MobiLens service.
A total of 234 million people age 13 and older in the U.S. used mobile devices by the end of Q4 2009 in December 2009. Motorola’s market share of this group dropped from 24.9% in Q3 2009 to 23.5% in Q4 2009. LG retained its number spot, incrementally increasing market share from 21.7% to 21.9%. The third- through fifth-most popular mobile OEMs, Samsung, Nokia, and RIM, also maintained their Q3 2009 market share positions in Q4 2009. Nokia’s share percentage slipped from 9.6% to 9.2%, while Samsung and RIM registered slight gains.
RIM Leads Platform Market Share
While it only came in fifth in terms of Q4 2009 mobile subscriber market share, RIM captured the top spot for smartphone platform market share with 41.6%, down from 42.6% in Q3 2009. Apple held second place, growing its market share from 24.1% to 25.3%. Microsoft, Palm, and Google also retained the third- through fifth-place spots from Q3 2009. Microsoft and Palm saw their market shares decline, while Google’s market share more than doubled from 2.5% to 5.2%.
Texting is Most Popular Mobile Activity
Sending text messages from one mobile phone to another remains the most popular activity among mobile phone users. 63.1% of mobile subscribers used text messaging in Q4 2009, compared to 61% in the previous quarter. The popularity of using the browser grew from 26% in Q3 2009 to 27.5% in Q4. Playing games, using downloaded apps, addressing social networking sites or blogs, and listening to music also all increased in popularity among mobile phone users in Q4 2009.
Teens Drive Text Growth
U.S. mobile users ages 17 and under are driving the growth in texting, according to research from The Nielsen Company. By analyzing more than 40,000 monthly US mobile bills, Nielsen determined American teens sent an average of 3,146 texts a month each during Q3 2009, or 10 per hour not spent asleep or in school. Their counterparts 9-12 sent an average of 1,146 monthly texts each, or four per hour not spent asleep or in school.
In comparison, the average number of monthly texts sent by all mobile users combined was a little more than 500. In Q4 2009, users 9-12 increased text usage by 8% and almost doubled their text message volume.
About the Survey: comScore MobiLens connects data on mobile consumer behavior, content merchandising and device capabilities in the U.S. and European mobile media markets.