Parks Associates's latest report on the sate of the US mobile market reveals a few interesting facts. Perhaps most intriguing is the reduced gap between the two titans in the realm - Apple and Samsung. The former currently controls 40% of the local mobile market, but the Korean giant is quickly catching up with 31%. Samsung's US expansion is definitely impressive, but other foreign OEM's are exhibiting the same trend, although on a much smaller scale. Third place on the list goes to LG, with 10% market share and other major brand names, like Motorola and HTC have about 5% reach, combined.
On a global scale, Samsung still led the race in 2015, with a total of 324.8 million units shipped, leaving Cupertino at second place with about 231.5 million sales.
Another interesting trend, unearthed in the Parks Associates's research concerns smartphone upgrade cycles. The numbers show that about a third of iOS users still own a handset that is more than two years old, while only 30% of Samsung users are on a device as dated. This could be interpreted as a testament to the futureproofing of Apple handsets, but it might also have to do with carrier efforts to shorten hardware upgrade cycles as much as possible and encourage more frequent sales.
Operators are pulling out all the tricks to encourage phone upgrades... The once-familiar two-year contract, which tied consumers to a two-year phone upgrade cycle, is gradually fading. U.S. carriers started to do away with two-year contracts in 2012, and by the third quarter of 2015, only 51% of mobile consumers had a contract, down from almost 70% at the end 2011.
A few other curious statistic from the report state that:
- More than 70% of smartphone users now watch short streaming video clips, and more than 40% watch long streaming videos on their device.
- Almost 40% of smartphone users use the voice recognition function; among iPhone users, more than half have used Siri.
- 36% use Wi-Fi calling
- 35% stream music from the phone to speakers
- 26% use a payment app for purchases at a retail location
- 24% stream video from the phone to a second screen (e.g., TV, PC, etc.)
