The iPhone 4S helped grow Apple's fourth-quarter market share.
(Credit: Apple)Apple's iPhone 4S proved to be the catalyst that jumpstarted iPhone sales last quarter, a new study from Nielsen has found.
Among Americans who bought a new smartphone in the last three months, 44.5 percent of those surveyed in December purchased an iPhone, putting Apple's handset just behind Android smartphones, which were picked up by 46.9 percent of December respondents, according to Nielsen. RIM's BlackBerry earned 4.5 percent market share.
That finding stands in stark contrast to results from Nielsen's October survey of users who bought a new smartphone in the previous three months. That time around, 61.6 percent of consumers said they chose an Android-based handset, and just 25.1 percent said they bought an iPhone. BlackBerry came in third place with 7.7 percent market share.
Not surprisingly, Apple's iPhone 4S, which launched in October, was the reason the company's smartphone performed so much better later in the year. In fact, Nielsen found that 57 percent of new iPhone owners surveyed in December bought the iPhone 4S. The research firm didn't say how many bought the iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4.
Apple's iPhone 4S proved to be a hit nearly immediately. The company announced back in October that in the iPhone 4S' first weekend of availability, it sold 4 million units, doubling iPhone 4 sales during its first weekend. Part of the iPhone 4S' appeal was pent-up demand, as consumers waited over a year to get their hands on the device.
But even as more consumers flocked to the iPhone, Apple could do little to stop Android from dominating the smartphone space last quarter. According to Nielsen, Android captured 46.3 percent market share during the three-month period, easily outpacing Apple's 30 percent share. RIM came in third place with 14.9 percent market share, followed by Windows Mobile at 4.6 percent share.
A look at how consumers purchased smartphones over the last three months.
(Credit: Nielsen)Over the entire three-month period--not monthly, as previously shown--it was a similar story. During the fourth quarter, 51.7 percent of people who bought devices went with an Android handset. Apple's iPhone nabbed 37 percent share. RIM's BlackBerry came in at 6 percent.
Looking beyond iPhones and Android, Nielsen found that 46 percent of all U.S.-based mobile consumers last quarter owned a smartphone, and the company expects that figure to grow "quickly." It's hard to argue with that logic: 60 percent of all mobile consumers last quarter chose a smartphone over a feature phone.
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