Google+ Breaks Into The Top 15 Mobile Apps — comScore

Yesterday afternoon comScore released its US smartphone and mobile app rankings for March. Interestingly the company appears to have discontinued its ranking for mobile websites and is now only reporting on the top apps.

In terms of smartphone marketshare, the story remains largely unchanged over the past six months, except that Samsung continues to incrementally gain share among Android OEMs. The firm gained almost a point since December.

On the operating system front, Apple lost some share in the last quarter while both Android and Microsoft gained share. In October 2013 Android had 52.2 percent of the market so this is not a new high. We seem to have reached a kind of equilibrium where a couple of points are traded back and forth between Android and iOS each quarter.

In terms of actual internet traffic generated, the numbers are flipped. StatCounter reports that the iPhone is responsible for 52.5 percent of US mobile web traffic while Android drives 41.4 percent.

The question is: can Microsoft do anything to boost growth? In emerging markets it can offer low-end phones that compete on price. But in established markets like the US it’s a harder question to answer.

One very interesting aspect of this month’s report is comScore’s apparent decision to stop reporting on mobile websites. Past reports, starting in July 2013, featured the top 15 mobile sites beside the top 15 mobile apps. This month’s report only features the top 15 apps.

Below I’ve compared the top 15 this month with the top 15 from July 2013:

The lists above are quite similar except that Google+ has entered the top 15 for the first time. It’s important to point out that the rankings look at “reach” and not active usage or engagement.

ComScore says that 68.8 percent of US mobile subscribers owned smartphones in March. However there’s good reason to believe that penetration has already crossed the 70 percent threshold. A couple of reports we discussed yesterday project 90 percent smartphone penetration in the US and UK markets by the end of 2016.