Consumer Intelligence Research Partners has released an analysis of mobile phones as of September 30, 2021. CIRP finds over the past three years Apple’s iPhone maintained the largest overall share of the U.S. smartphone market.
Within the Android operating system, Samsung has a similar position as Apple does within the overall smartphone market.
“Apple kept its share as customers largely remain loyal to either the Apple iOS or Google Android operating system, and iOS is exclusive to Apple, of course,” said Josh Lowitz, CIRP Partner and Co-Founder. “Apple had just under half of all US smartphone sales in the past three years. In the same period, Samsung captured a little more than half of Android sales.”
“Loyalty and switching within Android phone brands explains some of what we’ve seen,”added Mike Levin, CIRP Partner and Co-Founder. “Apple loyalty remains very high, with over 90% of Apple buyers remaining with Apple. Samsung has relatively high loyalty, with around two-thirds of Samsung buyers staying with Samsung. Loyalty of other brands, like Motorola and LG, was under 40%. Motorola seems to have benefitted most from switchers, gaining customers almost equally from Samsung, LG, and other brands. As LG exits the smartphone market, Motorola seems to have taken its customers more than the other Android brands, and perhaps there will be room for Google to gain share with its Pixel phones.”
CIRP bases its findings on its quarterly surveys of US customers that activated a new or used phone, with 500 subjects in each survey, from October 2019-September 2021 period.
