GigaOM » ComScore

iPhone remains top US smartphone, while iOS gains a bit of ground on Android

Erica Ogg — Fri, 03 May 2013 21:29:20 +0000

Apple’s worldwide iPhone’s sales may be may have slowed during the last quarter from its formerly rapid pace, but in the U.S. the device still picked up market share against competition that remained mostly static, according to ComScore’s MobiLens survey published Friday.

ComScore found Apple’s share of the smartphone market, already tops in the U.S., grew from 36.3 percent to 39 percent between December and March. In second place was Samsung, which stayed about the same during the quarter, rising a smidge from 21 percent to 21.7 percent. Meanwhile, the rest of the top five smartphone makers didn’t fare as well:

There were 136.7 million people who owned smartphones in the U.S. — 58 percent of all mobile subscribers — and Apple and Samsung’s dominance of that market continues mostly unchallenged. Together they now own 91 percent of smartphone users as HTC, Google-owned Motorola, and LG lost share, ComScore’s survey says.

On the smartphone software front, Apple’s iOS remained No. 2 behind Android, but made modest gains. iOS picked up about 2.7 perent share to reach 39 percent of all smartphones, while Android dipped a bit from 53.4 percent to 52 percent.

In other words, the U.S. smartphone story didn’t change too much in the first quarter of 2013: Android is still used by more than half of all smartphones and the iPhone is still by far the most popular smartphone in the U.S. The momentum, which was nominally in Apple’s favor last quarter, may shift a bit when we look at this survey three months from now though. Several flagship Android phones will start selling in larger quantities during that time, including the Samsung Galaxy S and the HTC One.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Comscore: Android still top US smartphone OS, but iPhone top smartphone and iOS gaining

Erica Ogg — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 20:03:48 +0000

Despite some handwringing over Apple’s somewhat slowing iPhone growth, its share of smartphone subscribers has continued to rise in its biggest market: the U.S. On Wednesday ComScore published a report taking the temperature of the smartphone market in Apple’s home country and it is at No. 1 with a 37.8 percent share of the market. Samsung, Apple’s biggest rival, is in second place, but isn’t really that close behind with a 21.4 percent share.

Apple’s share represents 3.5 percent growth compared to the last time ComScore issued this report in October 2012. And unless you missed Apple’s earnings results from the December holiday quarter, you won’t be surprised at that growth since Apple sold 48 million iPhones worldwide between October and December.

But while the company is leading in hardware sales, iOS is still far behind the Android juggernaut. Even though it fell 1.3 percent between October and December to 52.3 percent share, Android still is the most popular smartphone operating system in the U.S. Apple’s share grew 3.5 percent to a 37.8 percent share of mobile operating systems among smartphone owners, says ComScore.

Still, even in the face of evidence that Apple is doing well now, some people who watch the company and its stock are worried about what comes next and whether the company can continue to post quarterly gains of iPhone sales in established markets like the U.S. as the device nears its sixth birthday.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

ComScore: Windows Phone lost US market share in holiday quarter

Kevin C. Tofel — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 13:52:00 +0000

Apparently, there were many more iPhones and Android handsets under the Christmas tree in 2012, which isn’t a holiday gift for the other smartphone platforms. On Thursday, ComScore released its smartphone subscriber share numbers for the U.S. and in the last quarter of the year, iOS and Android phones continued to rise over the prior quarter. Unfortunately for Microsoft, it got a lump of coal.

I’m not surprised by the growth in iOS and Android devices; combined these two accounted for 89.7 percent of U.S. smartphones used in the quarter, per ComScore’s research. What is surprising, not to mention disappointing, is Microsoft’s decline from the prior three-month period. BlackBerry’s share fell also, but that was to be expected: The company’s new BlackBerry 10 devices are only just now becoming available.

Although it didn’t have a full quarter to work with — Windows Phone 8 devices launched in early November — Microsoft actually introduced the new operating system in the last quarter of 2012 and Nokia, arguably Microsoft’s most important smartphone partner, debuted a line of new Lumia phones during the same period.

I subscribe to the “smartphone race is a marathon, not a sprint” theory, but when the gun goes off, you need to jump from the starting line. That didn’t appear to happen last quarter; at least not in the U.S.

For its part, Nokia said it moved 4.4 million Lumia handsets in the final quarter of 2012. I don’t doubt that figure. However, even with competitive pricing that puts a Lumia in your pocket for less than the cost of an iPhone 5 or comparable Android device, the percent of Lumia’s sold is surely a small bit of that 4.4 million sales figure. With fewer Windows Phone models from HTC, Samsung and others, this may be a case of “as Nokia goes in the U.S. smartphone market, so too does Microsoft.”

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Online audiences soar with new mobile measurements: 10 sites have 100 million+

Jeff John Roberts — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 14:08:38 +0000

More and more people are consuming content on smartphones and tablets but, until now, the rankings that determine websites’ popularity have largely failed to account for them. This is finally changing as analytics company comScore has formally unveiled a new set of metrics that measure both mobile visits and traditional web traffic at the same time.

Launched this morning, comScore’s “Media Metrix Multi-platform” shakes up the existing rankings in some dramatic ways. Music site Pandora, for instance, jumps from #61 on the list to #23 while ESPN jumped four slots to #19. The sports site’s jump comes thanks to the inclusion of the 35 percent of people who consume ESPN only on mobile, not desktop, devices. Other big winners included Amazon, Wal-Mart and e-Bay; the three companies all had an incremental mobile audience of more than 20 percent. Here’s a look at some of the US numbers:

The new metrics, which are based on a mix of internet tagging and census methods, also reveal that the number of so-called “unique visitors” to websites are much higher when mobile figures are included. For instance, comScore says that more than 10 websites have more than 100 million visitors when mobile stats are included (compared to only six such sites if only desktop figures are used).

comScore says its new analytics system also suggests other important lessons in how publishers and advertisers measure a website’s success. In particular, the company recommends valuing “engagement” (time spent on a site) over page views. Under the engagement method, comScore says Facebook ranked first in the mobile category.

comScore’s new metrics system is still in beta but, given that mobile consumption is an irreversible phenomenon, it seems inevitable that publishers and advertisers will have to get accustomed to the new measurements. The growing predominance of mobile also poses challenge to publishers and advertisers who are still struggling out how to extract money from smaller screens.

While comScore has offered mobile measurement tools in the past, the significance of the new product is that provides an unduplicated tally across all platforms. More details are available here at comScore’s release.

(Image by iko via Shutterstock)

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Gmail finally beats Hotmail, according to third-party data [chart]

Rani Molla — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 17:38:34 +0000

Google’s email service finally became the world’s largest email provider this month, according to ComScore. Gmail had claimed the top spot for itself this summer when it announced 425 million monthly active users. However, VentureBeat at the time pointed out that these numbers wildly differed (by 136 million) from those of ComScore, which tracks home and work usage but not mobile. Hotmail and Yahoo Mail self-report, too, but their numbers were much closer to ComScore’s.

According to October ComScore data, the number of unique visitors to these email providers is down overall — perhaps because of the recent introduction of Microsoft’s Outlook and AOL’s Alto — but for the first time Gmail is in the lead.

Around the world, Yahoo and Gmail are competing for similar markets, with both companies counting their highest number of unique visitors in the United States, Japan, India, United Kingdom and France. Hotmail seems to have a slightly different market: Its highest number of unique visitors are not only from the United States, United Kingdom and France, but also Brazil and Mexico.

Despite Gmail’s worldwide dominance, third-place Yahoo owns the U.S. market, with 7 million more unique visitors than Gmail as well as a higher penetration. That means 40.8 percent of online Americans use Yahoo, compared to 36.7% using Gmail and 18.9% using Hotmail.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

The state of cross-platform media measurement

lydialoizides — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 14:30:17 +0000

Today brand advertisers must go to great lengths to find their audiences. Thus, brand advertising’s focus on cross-platform media measurement has grown dramatically in the past five years. But the ecosystem, which this report examines from a broad perspective, struggles to solve the correlation between the two media-viewing behemoths, TV and online. Within the next 36 months, the measurement of cross-platform digital video advertising will standardize, driven by the shift in media dollars from TV to online viewing, the adoption of the Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) initiative, and another political and Olympic cycle. In the meantime, new types of measurement of online behavior and ad performance will come to market.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

ComScore: iPhone barely edges Android’s growth in U.S.

Erica Ogg — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 20:24:16 +0000

Between February and May this year, Apple’s iPhone saw a sliver of growth in smartphone market share in the U.S., where it accounts for a little over 30 percent of all smartphone subscriptions. Meanwhile Android saw smaller growth, but is still the most prevalent OS on smartphones, with a little over 50 percent market share, according to ComScore’s MobiLens report released Monday.

Little has changed since February, the last time MobiLens’ survey of 30,000 U.S. adults smartphone owners was published: Android is still the smartphone leader. ComScore did count 110 million smartphones subscribers in May, which is five percent more than counted in February. And of that growth, it appears Apple was the biggest beneficiary.

Android having 50 percent market share is a number that’s important to Google, of course, and to Apple. If you’re trying to gauge how the individual handset makers are doing, the far more interesting number is a comparison of smartphone manufacturer market share, which MobiLens hasn’t provided. Instead, it gives an overall picture of mobile phones sales, both feature phones and smarpthones: Of the 234 million mobile owners in May, 25.7 percent owned a Samsung device, 19.1 percent an LG and 15 percent an iPhone, followed by Motorola (now owned by Google) with 12 percent and HTC with 6.1 percent.

It’s interesting to see a slight uptick between February and May in iPhone marketshare, both on the iOS side and on the handset side, especially because Apple hasn’t released a new phone since October. However, it has recently added several new carriers, the impact of which won’t be reflected right away. But with the addition of the first pre-paid offerings of the iPhone, it could make the next round of market share tabulations in August a little more interesting.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Vevo viewers down 20% year-to-year

Daniel Frankel — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 20:29:38 +0000

Note: This story was updated to include an additional response from Vevo.

Music video platform Vevo, which had been one of the fastest growing video properties on the Internet, is witnessing a steep viewership drop, at least on the web.

According to numbers released Monday by Internet usage tracker comScore, Vevo’s unique viewers in the U.S. during May dropped 20 percent from the same period last year, from 60.4 million to around 48.3 million.

Meanwhile, the average number of minutes each viewer spent watching Vevo videos in May declined 26 percent over the same period, from 105.1 to 77.7.

The online music platform, jointly launched in December 2009 by Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Abu Dhabi Media, had been on a meteoric rise, with unique viewers growing 44 percent from June 2010 to June 2011.

So what’s going on?

Also read: What a Facebook deal with Vevo could unleash

A Vevo spokesperson told paidContent Monday that the comScore metrics don’t offer a complete picture of a content business that has migrated to some degree from a core YouTube channel to mobile platforms, areas that not included in the research group’s measurement.

Vevo claims “active” users of its mobile apps have increased 46 percent year over year, with mobile streams up 434 percent over that period, reaching 450 million worldwide in May.

Added: Vevo additionally notes that a methodology change enacted by comScore in July 2011 renders our May 2011 – May 2012 comparison of minutes spent by user moot. In fact, minutes spent by user per month watching Vevo content have actually risen since the methodology change.

Vevo also attributes some of the discrepancy to Google’s redesign of YouTube, which has moved away from feeds of most popular videos to a channel/subscriber model.

The comScore metrics also don’t reflect performance in other territories where Vevo operates, such as Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.

Note: This story was updated to include Vevo’s response.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

StatShot: Who’s buying tablets and watching more video

Kevin C. Tofel — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 16:07:53 +0000

Smartphone owners are driving tablet demand in the U.S. as 23.6 percent of those with a smartphone now own a slate. The data comes from ComScore, which says nearly one in four consumers with a smartphone purchased a tablet between February and April of this year. Only 10.4 percent of feature phone owners, in contrast, accounted for tablet sales during this time period.

Video consumption on tablets continues to grow as consumers want movies and television shows on the go, but with a larger screen than offered on smartphones. ComScore considers a tablet to be a device with at least a 7-inch screen.

More than half of all consumers who own a tablet — 53 percent — watched video on their device during the three-month period, compared to a scant 20 percent of those who consumed such content on their smartphone. As a result, content providers could shift their efforts to improving tablet apps instead of those for smartphones.

Video consumption on tablets and smartphone still isn’t an everyday activity for most, however. ComScore says that only 9.5 percent of tablet owners and 2.9 percent of smartphone users watch online video daily. Still there’s opportunity there — are you listening HBO? — as ComScore found that 26.7 percent of device owners paid for mobile content.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

YouTube’s April video usage up 55% over 2011

Daniel Frankel — Fri, 18 May 2012 21:06:08 +0000

Digital media companies like YouTube and Yahoo have yet to see how much they will have increased their ad base by upping the quality of their video content recently.

But as monthly video data released by comScore shows, both companies have managed to significantly increase the amount of time viewers spend watching video on their respective channels.

Also read: TV nets wrap upfront week: “The biz still goes through us”

According to comScore, viewers spent an average of 434.8 minutes in April watching video on Google channels, a grouping the mainly includes the assets of YouTube. That represents an uptick of 55 percent over April 2011.

On Yahoo channels, meanwhile, viewers spent an average of 73.7 minutes in April watching video, nearly double the 37.5 minutes they averaged in April 2011.

While time spent viewing these leading digital channel operators has increased dramatically, total unique viewers watching them has not.

Tabulating 157.7 million unique video users in April, Google sites experienced only an 11 percent increase over April 2011′s tally of 142.7 million.

Yahoo, meanwhile, was virtually flat, counting 53.6 million uniques in April compared to 53.2 million during the same period last year.

These year-over-year benchmarks for the leading internet video providers follow trend lines of the broader online video industry.

For the entire online video universe, comScore tabulated 180.8 million unique viewers in April, up just 5 percent over April 2011. However, total minutes spent watching online video increased 46 percent to an average of 1,307.7 (I know, who are the people with all this time who are top-weighting these averages?).

Even with the uptick in consumption, YouTube and Yahoo’s rise in usage has come at a cost to others.

Vevo traffic continues to slide

Music video giant Vevo, for example, saw its unique viewers plummet 10 percent to 49.5 million over the same period, while its average viewership time declined by 41 percent to 57.9 minutes. (The comScore report doesn’t track mobile usage, so it’s hard to tell how many viewers are migrating to mobile platforms.)

Also, Viacom digital, the leader among traditional media companies in the digital video realm, saw its average viewer time drop 27 percent to 58.9 minutes (unique viewers were flat year over year at 41.2 million).

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.