NPD Group Blog » A Phone Call To Action

A Phone Call To Action

Thursday, August 5th, 2010
By Ross Rubin, Executive Director, NPD Connected Intelligence

This week NPD reported on Q2’s smartphone OS market share. It was a big quarter for Android, which is now installed on one of every three smartphones sold in the U.S. Android’s gains clearly came at the expense of RIM, which dropped nine percentage points quarter over quarter, and has seen an even more precipitous drop from a year ago. And yet, even with smartphones now growing to account for 42 percent of the U.S. market, Samsung and LG continued to lead the overall U.S. handset market without a significant smartphone presence, certainly in relation to their feature phones.

However, as both companies realize, they are not completely above the fray. In Q1, for example, as Verizon went on a smartphone tear that marked the rise of the original Droid, Samsung pulled far ahead of LG, which suffered as more Verizon customers adopted smartphones instead of its feature phones that are popular at the carriers. In Q2, as Verizon ended its buy one-get one smartphone promotion, LG made up some lost ground with Samsung. LG also launched the Ally, its first Android smartphone, at Verizon Wireless.

For its part, Samsung, which has dabbled in the Android market with the Moment at Sprint and the Behold II at T-Mobile, has made a multi-carrier assault with four flavors of its Galaxy S device. The Captivate and Vibrant have already launched on the nation’s largest GSM carriers, while the Epic 4G and Fascinate remain on tap for Sprint and Verizon. As Samsung pushes forward on Android and Bada, and as LG becomes a lead Microsoft partner for Windows Phone 7, the next year will help to determine if thee market leaders have been sleeping giants in the smartphone market.

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