January 2012 US smartphone market share: Google's Android wins; RIM, Microsoft Windows lose

According to the latest data released by Comscore, US smartphone subscribers grew by 3.5% QoQ to reach 101.3 million units in January 2012.

In terms of smartphone platforms, Android and IOS (Apple) continue to gain market share, while Microsoft's share declined in spite of the initial launch of Lumia 710 by Nokia. RIM's market share also declined.

Google's Android and Apple's IOS continue their strong performance 

Android's impressive run continued and it gained 1.3% share in Jan 2012 to reach 48.6% market share.

IOS registered a small decline by 0.1% after gaining an impressive 2.2% in the last three months.

Both the platforms now combined account for an impressive 78.1% of the total subscribers. 

Microsoft's Windows continues to lose market share

Windows share declined by 0.3% in January, in spite of the launch of Lumia 710, which also ranked very high in the initial customer delight rankings.

But, both Microsoft and Nokia would be hoping that this trend will reverse in the coming months, as Lumia 800 and 900 sales number are incorporated.

Nokia has never been able to crack the US market, even in the old days of global domination, and would be hoping that Lumia finally gives it a strong foothold in the US.

For Microsoft also, this will the last big chance, because if Nokia fails, then the Windows platform will be dead and revenues from the the mobile segment will be limited to royalties from Android.

Globally, Nokia's Windows based handsets have done well in 4Q 2011 selling 0.9 million handsets and becoming the largest Windows smartphone vendor with a market share of 33%.

RIM - decline continues

RIM's market share continued to decline, with a loss of 0.8% share in the month of January. Overall, in the last 12 months, RIM's share has halved - from 30.4% in Jan 2011 to 15.2% in Jan 2012. There doesn't seem any near term catalyst for RIM, so expect its share to further decline

US smartphone market share historical trend