Apple’s IPhone 4S Closing Sales Gap With Android, Nielsen Says
January 19, 2012, 8:35 AM ESTBy Scott Moritz
Jan. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc.’s new iPhone 4S helped the company close the gap with devices that use Google Inc.’s Android software in the U.S., research firm Nielsen Co. said.
About 45 percent of U.S. shoppers who bought a smartphone in the last three months of 2011 said they purchased an iPhone, up from 25 percent in a study done two months earlier, Nielsen said today in a report. Android phones were selected by 47 percent of buyers, down from 62 percent.
The introduction of the iPhone 4S in October helped Cupertino, California-based Apple’s sales pick up pace, Nielsen said. When rolling out the new model, Apple also cut the price of an earlier model to zero, when purchased with a contract.
As of December, 46 percent of U.S. mobile-phone users had smartphones, with sales of such more-advanced devices outpacing cheaper, traditional handsets. Android devices accounted for 46 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, followed by the iPhone at 30 percent and Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry at 15 percent, according to New York-based Nielsen.
Verizon Wireless, the largest U.S. mobile-phone carrier, said this month it sold 4.2 million iPhones last quarter, more than doubling from the third quarter. Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray Cos., last week raised his global iPhone sales estimate for the December quarter to 30 million units, up from a previous projection of 26 million.
--Editors: Ville Heiskanen, Cecile Daurat
-0- Jan/18/2012 14:49 GMT
To contact the reporter on this story: Scott Moritz in New York at smoritz6@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Elstrom at pelstrom@bloomberg.net -0- Jan/18/2012 14:15 GMT
