When you buy a Samsung smartphone, you quickly discover that most of its internal storage is taken up by the TouchWiz operating system. That’s because it’s jam-packed with pre-installed apps and features that Samsung believes we all want — but how many of those apps actually get used?

Not many of them. According to data from Strategy Analytics, the average Galaxy smartphone user spends little time with Samsung’s own offerings, with the company’s most popular app getting just 3.9 minutes of use per month.

Apple has overtaken Samsung to become the largest mobile phone vendor in the United States for the first time. The Cupertino company captured a record 34% market share during the fourth quarter of 2012 with around 17.7 million devices sold, while Samsung captured 32% with around 16.8 million devices sold.

Samsung and Apple are the only two smartphone vendors currently seeing growth in the United States, and although it was Apple that saw the most between September and November of last year, it’s Samsung who will attract most customers throughout 2013. The Korean electronics giant will see 35% growth over the next 12 months, according to Strategy Analytics, further increasing the lead over its arch rival in Cupertino.

New numbers show Android-based tablets are gaining on the reigning champ, Apple’s iPad. Although Android owns 39 percent of the tablet market, some question whether there’s a ringer: Amazon’s Kindle Fire. The device is the first non-Apple tablet to lay a hand on the iPad, but uses a highly-customized version of Google’s mobile operating system. How much of Android’s gains are due to its barely-recognizable distant cousin, twice removed?