According to a report from the Wireless Smartphone Strategies service by Strategy Analytics for smartphone shipments in the second quarter of 2012, overall shipments in the United States fell 5.4 percent from the year-ago quarter to just under 24 million units. Q2 had one of the slowest growth rates ever for the U.S. smartphone market.
iOS was the only smartphone operating system that grew in market share and shipments during the quarter and it was mostly at Android’s expense. Android shipments dropped from 15.3 million in Q2 2011 to 13.4 million last quarter. Meanwhile, Apple’s iOS jumped from 5.9 million units to 7.9 million. Android is still obviously the market leader in the United States, but the gap between the two is tightening, even if only temporarily. BlackBerry OS fell to 1.6 million units from 2.7 a year ago — no surprise there — and all others collectively declined by 400,000 shipments to 1 million.
Added up, 23.8 million smartphones were shipped during the second quarter compared to the 25.2 million in Q2 2011.
In terms of market share percentages, Android dominates over half of the market at 56.3 percent, down from the previous year’s 60.6 percent. iOS leaped up by exactly 10 percent to 33.2 percent, BlackBerry dropped 4 percent to 6.5 percent, and the rest lost 1.7 percent now sitting at 4 percent market share.
It’s worth noting that BlackBerry’s 6.5 percent market share is the lowest ever in recent history. Strategy Analytics blames this on consumer and enterprise customers who “continue to be frustrated by Blackberry’s limited touchscreen smartphone portfolio and repeated delays to its new BB10 operating system.”
Apple’s upcoming sixth-generation iPhone is also likely to further close the gap between iOS and Android.