OEM

Research firm comScore is out today with its usual report covering U.S. smartphone subscriber market share for the three month period ending in May. Over the last three months Apple has gained in both categories including ‘top smartphone OEMs’ and ‘OS usage’, continuing its lead as the top smartphone manufacturer and growing its share of the market by platform.

The previous three month period had Apple at 38.9% of the market, making it the number #1 smartphone vendor in the US over second place Samsung. In May, Apple continues that lead by increasing its share 0.3 percentage points to 39.2% of the market. That’s significantly higher than the 23% Samsung grabbed despite growing 1.7 percentage points during the quarter. In a close race for third place is HTC with 8.7%, Motorola with 7.8%, and LG with 6.7%, all of which dropped less than a percentage point since last quarter.

When it comes to the market by OS usage, Android is still on top, growing 0.7 percentage points to 52.4% this quarter. Apple experienced slightly less growth at 0.3 percentage points to capture 39.2% of the market up from its 38.9% share last quarter. That means the majority of the growth, once again, comes at the expense of BlackBerry and Microsoft.
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If you haven’t heard by now, Google has shocked many this week with their acquisition of Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, which still may have to pass regulatory review for GOOG to avoid an unusually high $2.5b reverse termination fee. However, while there might be a few hoping the deal falls through, Microsoft is taking this time to convince smartphone makers the Windows Phone platform is the only “truly open mobile ecosystem”.

President of Windows Phone division, Andy Lees, provided the following statement (via WinSuperSite) following the Google/Motorola acquisition announcement:

“Investing in a broad and truly open mobile ecosystem is important for the industry and consumers alike, and Windows Phone is now the only platform that does so with equal opportunity for all partners..”

This comes after Microsoft announced a deal with Nokia in February that would see Windows Phone 7 become Nokia’s primary OS for smartphones (a deal that appears to give Nokia an unfair advantage over other partners). As a result, Nokia will be working closely with Microsoft and integrating a ton of their own content into the OS including their content and application store, and the Nokia Maps app. The handsets will also receive the Xbox Live, Zune music store, and Bing search treatment from Microsoft.

While the deal isn’t exclusive (allowing Microsoft to partner with other manufacturers and Nokia to make devices powered by another OS), it certainly gives the two companies an unfair advantage over other OEMs considering the Windows Phone platform… and seems to contradict Lees’ statement of the OS being an “equal opportunity for all partners”. Google’s acquisition of Motorola may have a bigger impact down the line depending on their plans for the company… but for the time being the Google/Motorola partnership doesn’t provide any less incentive for new Android partners than the Microsoft/Nokia deal does for potential Windows Phone manufacturers.

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