April 2013 comScore US smartphone market share: Flat

comScore released their April 2013 US smart phone market share numbers.  Because of the way comScore presents its data (3-month differences to separate out its 3-month rolling average collection methods), it looks as if Blackberry has had a large decline coupled with a big spurt of growth from Apple.

Top Smartphone Platforms 3 Month Avg. Ending Apr. 2013 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Jan. 2013 Total U.S. Smartphone Subscribers Age 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens
	Share (%) of Smartphone Subscribers
	Jan-13	Apr-13	Point Change
Total Smartphone Subscribers	100.0%	100.0%	N/A
Google	52.3%	52.0%	-0.3
Apple	37.8%	39.2%	1.4
BlackBerry	5.9%	5.1%	-0.8
Microsoft	3.1%	3.0%	-0.1

But if you break the data down to month-to-month changes, since January of this year, market share fluctuations have flattened out recently, specifically since January 2013, there has been little change.

Trailing 12 months

Jan - April 2013

For Blackberry, at least it means that its market share is no longer crumbling at an incredible rate (it's still shrinking, albeit 0.1 percentage point between March and April), following its introduction of the Z10.  Seeing how so many Blackberry fans (who'd previously switched to other platforms) love the physical keyboard, the introduction of Q10 might finally result in market share growth...but don't hold your breath.

For Microsoft, it has to be severely disappointing that, despite its release of WP 8.0 in late October 2012, nothing has changed (3.0% in October 2012 and 3.0% in April 2013).  Considering that in November 2010 (the month Windows Phones were available in the US), Microsoft's total market share (combined legacy Windows Mobile and new Windows Phone) was 9.0%, and Microsoft's total market share is now 3.0%, something is not quite right.

This seems to bode favorably for Android and Apple, possibly signaling a maturity of the US smart phone market, locking in stability and market share.  The number of smart phone owners continues to grow, but it's unmistakable that the graph is closer to the top of the curve, not the middle.  It also signals that Mozilla's smart phone ambitions are probably doomed -- after all, Android and WP manufacturers can simply make cheaper phones to match a $50 Firefox phone base price, but still have access to much larger numbers of mature apps.