LG Overtakes Apple To Claim Second Place In U.S. Phone Market Share [Report]

(9:29 am PDT, Jan 21st)

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Just a few weeks ago, we reported that Samsung and Apple were the only two smartphone manufacturers seeing growth in the United States, and that the pair were slowly eating away at their rivals’ market share. But when you take old-fashioned feature phones into account, the situation looks a little different.

New data from Counterpoint Research suggests that strong December sales have helped LG overtake Apple to claim the second-largest stake of the U.S. phone market. As you might expect, Samsung is still way ahead in first.

LG announced last week that its flagship Optimus G had recently surpassed the one million sales mark, and the Korean company is enjoying plenty of success with the Nexus 4, which it manufactures for Google. Clearly that success is paying off, because it now owns the second-largest share of the U.S. phone market.

Counterpoint claims that brisk sales of LG smartphones over the Christmas period helped its share of mobile devices in the U.S. increase to 13%, narrowly beating Apple’s 12% share. Samsung remained top of the pile with a whopping 33% share, while Motorola and HTC claimed a 9% and 8% share respectively.

LG lost its second spot during the third quarter of 2011 following the launch of the iPhone 4S, according to Counterpoint, and Apple has been nipping at Samsung’s heels ever since. Thanks to the increasing popularity of LG devices, however, the two companies have switched again.

It’s unclear which LG devices performed so well in December, but given that the Optimus G has only sold one million units in four months, we suspect the Nexus 4 has been leading the sales spike.

Of course, it’s worth noting that the phone market is different to the smartphone market. Smartphones only account for around half of all phones in the U.S., which means the other half are traditional feature phones. Given that Apple doesn’t compete in this space, this does not mean LG’s smartphones have outsold Apple’s smartphones.

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Comment »

  • http://twitter.com/CZawadzki Christian Zawadzki

    People keep buying shit phones because they’re cheap, simple as that.

    • http://www.vgartdesign.com/ Volodoscope

      They’re not cheap though. Nexus 4 is $349. Unless you’re talking about on contract, which only US Markets follow. Most of the world pays full price for smartphones.

      • Melissa Peterson

        I think he was talking about feature phones.

  • http://twitter.com/markrlangston Mark Langston

    The title of the article is “LG Overtakes Apple” but then ends with “this does not mean LG’s smartphones have outsold Apple’s smartphones”.

    Sooo…?

  • http://www.facebook.com/laurence.konig Laurence Konig

    bs. sell a million phones and take lead , wtf….

    • Seltox

      Didn’t read, or didn’t understand the article?

      They sold 1,000,000 of their Optimus G. This was mentioned because it’s the only specific recent sales figures for them. As is also pressed, the Optimus G is unlikely to be the phone that’ getting them ahead, and it is probably the Google Nexus 4, which is in short supply compared to the demand.

      Please, make an attempt to understand the content before making a judgement. At least ask questions for clarification if you can’t make sense – there’s nothing wrong with asking questions, it’s how we all learn.

  • http://www.facebook.com/GeeDeezy Gary Dauphin

    I know numbers never lie, but I just find this hard to believe. While I see Apple and Samsung phones everywhere, I have never met anyone with an LG phone. Never. That’s not to say they aren’t selling at all, but it is odd I have never run into anyone with one.

    Wait until Wednesday when the iPhone numbers are released by Apple, and I think many will be surprised by the large number.

    That being said, Apple better get off its A$$ and start putting out more and better products, because the competition is coming up quick.

  • Uther_Pendragon

    >But when you take old-fashioned feature phones into account, the situation looks a little different.

    That would almost be relevant if Apple made dumb phones. Who wins if you include land line phones? How about CB and HAM radios? Telegraphs? Loud talkers?

  • http://twitter.com/ulyssesric Richard Liu

    Source please. The Counterpoint Research’s website does not offer any information related to this report. Their latest report about handset market is Oct. 2012.

    I guess it’s trustable that LG and Apple is very close and it really doesn’t that important who takes the 2nd position, but the number is hard to believe. According to comScore’s survey of U.S. overall mobile phone (both smart and non-smart) market share over the holiday season, Samsung takes 26.5%, Apple takes 18.1%, while LG takes 17.8%.

    I know that the statistic result would be affected by the way they took samples, but the difference between two reports are too large to be explained by sampling miss. We’re talking a market with the scale of 53% of United States population, which means the difference of these two report is 15M units, That difference is ridiculous, since it took LG three months to reach the 1M sales mark of their Optimus G.

    So, what does that mean ? Either comScore is BSing, or Counterpoint’s BSing, or they are both (along with all the other “Analysts”) are BSing.

    Personally I’d believe the third option.

  • Alfiejr

    this is the stupidest “report” yet in what has been a month of incredibly stupid web stories about Apple etc.

    the “source” is some outfit in Korea, home of LG. any website that picks this trash up for repost is guilty of the most flagrant hit whoring.

    oh i see, it’s a Cultof joke.

About the author

Killian BellKillian Bell is a freelance writer based in the UK. He has an interest in all things tech and also writes for TechnoBuffalo. You can follow him on Twitter via @killianbell, or through his website.

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