Going against all odds, Apple manages to take a lead leaving Samsung behind with sales of over 17.7 million mobile phones in the U.S. during the fourth quarter taking 34 percent of the market share as opposed to Samsung’s 16.8 million handsets and a 32 percent market share. With this, Apple has become the top mobile-phone maker in the U.S. for the first time, getting a win in the company’s battle for global dominance in the mobile-device market.
With Samsung being the world leader in mobile phones last quarter with over 100 million units sold owing to its strategy of providing cheaper handsets with less/minimum sophistication, Apple faces intense competition in the US market with such giants like Samsung and other companies that use Google’s Android OS. But defying all such odds, Apple has made an impressive jump of 38 percent compared to last year, according to Strategy Analytics.
Executive director at Strategy Analytics, Neil Mawston said that Apple’s success has been driven by its popular ecosystem of iPhones and App Store, generous carrier subsidies, and extensive marketing around the new iPhone 5 model, while on the other hand Samsung had been the number one mobile phone vendor in the US since 2008, and it will surely be keen to recapture that title in 2013 by launching improved new models such as the rumored Galaxy S4. But, Samsung was still the biggest seller of phones in the U.S. during 2012, shipping 53 million phones to Apple’s 43.7 million.
On a different note, LG Electronics remained the 3rd largest vendor in the US, shipping 4.7 million mobile phones for a 9 percent market share. All in all, last year turned out to be a comeback period for the US phone market as smartphone sales soared high, growing four percent annually from 50.2 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011 to 52 million in the fourth quarter of 2012.
While Apple relies on the iPhone 5 for its sales, Samsung plans to fire up the race with the possible introduction of the Galaxy S4 this year. Only time can tell whether Samsung emerges a winner in this phone-battle or whether Apple will stay strong.
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