Smartphone giants Samsung and Apple continued to dominate the market in the second quarter, but LG is increasingly closing the gap, new data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech shows.
According to figures from the quarter ending June 2016, Samsung maintained its overall market share lead with 35 percent. Apple, however, was hot on its heels as a return to growth in the U.S. boosted its market share 1.3 percentage points year over year to nearly 32 percent.
By flagship device, though, Apple managed to gain an edge on Samsung, pulling in 15.1 percent of the smartphone sales with its iPhone 6s and 6s Plus to Samsung’s 14.1 percent with the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge.
While Apple and Samsung may be the stars of the show, Kantar said LG is also making moves.
Over the past two years, Kantar said LG has doubled its market share from seven percent to 14 percent. This has been driven in part by the strength of LG’s new G5 flagship device, which was the tenth best-selling smartphone in the second quarter, with 2.2 percent.
But there’s another factor in LG’s success, Kantar mobile analyst Lauren Guenveur said – the rise of prepaid.
“When we look past the LG G5 and its predecessors, LG’s next best-selling devices are in the mid- and lower range of the market, including the LG K7, LG Leon, and the LG Sunset/Sunrise,” Guenveur wrote. “These models are not typically available through the Big Four carriers but through smaller, prepaid carriers like MetroPCS, Boost Mobile, and TracFone. Forty-six percent of LG connections are prepaid, the highest of any manufacturer seen in the U.S.”
“These other carriers now represent 26% of smartphone connections in the US, up from 20% two years ago,” Guenveur continued. “In the six months ending June 2016, LG is the top-selling manufacturer on MetroPCS (40%), Boost (31%) and TracFone (34%).”