Apple Remains the Top Smartphone Manufacturer in U.S., Android Still the Most Popular Platform

The latest data gathered by the comScore MobiLens service was released yesterday, revealing the state of the U.S. smartphone industry over a three-month period ending in January. There were no major upsets as top manufacturers further solidified their spots at the top, while on the OS side of things, Android continued to reign supreme, though its market share did slip somewhat from October to January.

Overall, 129.4 million people owned smartphones in the U.S. as of January, representing 55 percent mobile market penetration and an increase of seven percent over October. This is impressive growth over May's 110 million smartphone users.

Apple came out once again as the top OEM, increasing its share of the U.S. market by 3.5 percent to hit 37.8 percent in January. Samsung, meanwhile, sat in second place at 21.4 percent market share, managing a 1.9 percent increase over its 19.5 percent October share.

HTC, Motorola and LG round out the top five with 9.7, 8.6 and 7.0 percent, respectively. It is noteworthy that of those three, LG was the only to increase its share percentage during the report's three-month period.

Meanwhile, Apple also increased its share of the U.S. smartphone platform market by 3.5 percent, likely driven by the release of the iPhone 5, to reach 37.8 percent, but still coming second to Android. However, the gap is closing between iOS and Android as Google's mobile OS lost 1.3 percent from October's 53.6 percent share to settle in at 52.3 percent. Still, this is a very respectable share of the market and likely the reason why ABI Research expects Android to account for 58 percent of total smartphone app downloads in 2013.

All versions of the BlackBerry OS made up 5.9 percent of the market in January, while Microsoft's mobile platforms — including Windows Phone and Windows Mobile — claimed 3.1 percent. Lastly, Nokia's retired Symbian OS held fifth place with a mere 0.5 percent share.

The comScore MobiLens service gathers its information from an intelligent online survey of a nationally representative sample of mobile subscribers aged 13 and up.