Apple Continues To Dominate US Smartphone OEMs In Q3, Samsung Follows With Marginal Quarterly Growth

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) maintained its position as the leading smartphone maker in the U.S. for the third quarter of 2013, followed by Samsung (KRX:005935), which trailed by 15.7 percentage points, according to fresh industry statistics released by comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR) on Tuesday.

The latest data revealed that Apple’s iPhone accounted for 40.6 percent of all smartphone subscribers in the U.S. for the three-month period ending in September, registering a small 0.7 percentage-point growth over the previous quarter. Samsung also grew its smartphone user base in the U.S. by 1.2 percentage points to account for 24.9 percent of the market.

The data show that Apple and Samsung were the only two companies among the top five original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, to show quarterly growth during this period. Next on the list were HTC (TPE:2498) and Motorola and both suffered a decline in growth in the third quarter. LG, which rounded out the top five, held on to its share from the previous quarter.

Here is a look at top five smartphone manufacturers in the U.S.

In operating systems, Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android led as the No. 1 smartphone platform with a 51.8 percent share, slipping slightly from the previous quarter. Android was followed by Apple’s iOS, which registered a small growth in the same period.

Struggling Blackberry (NASDAQ:BBRY) continued to lose market share and ended the third quarter with 3.8 percent of the market, down 0.6 percentage points from the second quarter of this year. Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows Phone grew slightly to take a 3.3 percent share of the market, while the obsolete Symbian OS held on to fifth position with a mere 0.3 percent share, which was unchanged from the preceding quarter.

Overall, according to comScore, 147.9 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the September quarter, up 4.5 percent since June.

In addition, the research firm released a few other interesting data points, including top smartphone properties and apps in the U.S. According to comScore, Google Sites ranked as the top mobile media property, reaching 90 percent of the mobile media audience while Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) was the top individual app, accounting for 74.3 percent of overall app usage.

Here is a complete list of top 15 smartphone properties and apps for September 2013: