| ebw said: Courtesy of asymco, this is smartphone user share for the US. I invite comments, especially on the Android curve which is just begging for newer data. Note that Android is still gaining users in absolute terms, but it was outpaced by the gains from iPhone (plus a little help from WP). Anecdotally, I just visited some friends in another state, and almost all of them were sporting a Galaxy Note II.
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It does look like Android has peaked in the US. The important caveat here is that the way the US cell market is structured pretty much makes it the most fertile soil for iPhone sales in the world, along with a few other, similarly structured markets. iPhone growth will be more challenging in markets with a larger mix of prepaid subscribers.
On the other hand, there are still a lot of carriers out there that don't offer the iPhone, And they're having a tough time doing without it, because carriers without the iPhone tend to lose subscribers — the most valuable subscribers — to competitors that do. Apple's just patiently waiting until these holdout carriers are willing to meet Apple's terms.
Another statistic of note is that the iPhone 4S outsold the Galaxy S3 worldwide last quarter:
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/02/20/apple-samsung-smartphone-sales/
Samsung's monster saw one quarter on top of the world, only to fall back below not only the latest iPhone, but also the iPhone that came out almost a year before it. Maybe the iPhone is stagnant and the 5 doesn't offer that much more than the 4S, but it looks like the 4S still offers more than the best competing handsets.
If the iPhone is stagnant yet is still growing, perhaps these competitors aren't actually catching up in the factors the iPhone sells on...
"The worst part about these reviews is they are [subjective]--and their scores often depend on how drunk you got the media at a Street Fighter event." — Mona Hamilton, Capcom Senior VP of Marketing
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