NPD Shows Apple, Samsung, LG Growing While Others Shrink

This week the NPD Group/Connected Intelligence Connected Home Report for the fourth quarter of 2012 was released, showing how Apple and Samsung are pulling in the biggest profit from the continued growth of smartphone popularity in the United States. They show that LG, too, saw some growth over the past year, while groups like HTC, Motorola, and BlackBerry saw losses in penetration. Even the "other" category shrunk while the biggest brands continued to whisk away market share.

You'll find Apple and Samsung together taking 68% of the market share amongst smartphone users in the USA according to NPD. Meanwhile no one single brand hits at above 10% for this quarter of the year. Last year at this time we saw both Motorola and HTC working with between 10 and 15% of the market in smartphones, but their shares have decreased with the monstrous growth of both Samsung and Apple.

BlackBerry's share is the most dire of all, working with closer to 5% last year at this time and right in at about 2% this quarter. Apple's iPhone ownership increased from Q4 2012's 35% of the market up to a cool 42% here in the last quarter of 2013.

Samsung's share grew from 22% up to 26% over the last year, while LG appears to have grown by less than 5% – but any growth is still growth! This report is based on "more than 5,000 US consumers" surveyed by NPD with ages 18 and older. This report also suggests that "smartphone penetration" – the amount of people that actually own a smartphone – has increased from 52% in the USA to a hard 60% here in the last quarter of 2013.