Apple Only Vendor to Show U.S. Market Share Growth in Q3

According to Comscore, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) was the only top-five mobile phone company to have grown its U.S. mobile subscriber share in Q3 2011 to give it share of around 10%. ^[1] Android was the top-ranked smartphone operating system with about 45% of subscribers using handsets running Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) software, a 5% increase from three months ago. Apple secured its place behind Android, growing about 1% to hold 27% of the market, and Research in Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM) ranked third with about 19% share. Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Nokia (NYSE:NOK) Symbian rounded out the top five with 5.6% and 1.8% of the smartphone base, respectively.

See our complete analysis for Apple stock here

Apple achieved this growth despite the delay in the launch of iPhone 4S, which it eventually did in mid-October. We believe the only worrying aspect from Apple’s point of view is the rapid rise of the Android ecosystem. However, we expect Apple to make a comeback in Q4.

A recent report suggests that the 4S was the best-selling smartphone in October in the U.S. despite only being available for half of the month. The Apple iPhone 4 was also found to be among the three top-selling smartphones. ^[2]

According to another report, costly hardware failures are more common on Android devices than on iPhones. ^[3] As such, the total costs of ownership to telecom operators are much higher for Android devices and totals upto as much as $2 billion.

We believe this is another positive news for Apple as operators start to realize the advantages of Apple’s mobile products, which could see operators promoting Apple phones more heavily in the future.

Our $500 price estimate for Apple stock is about 25% above market price.

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1. comScore Reports September 2011 U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share, Press release, November 4th, 2011 [↩]
2. iPhone 4S now No.1 smartphone at top-3 U.S. carriers, iPhone 4 still hot, BGR quoting Canaccord Genuity’s checks as the source [↩]
3. Android phone repair cost telcos billions: study, Reuters quoting WDS as the source, November 2nd, 2011 [↩]