What Can We Learn from comScore’s Jan. 2010 Mobile Market Share Report?

Longtime MobileContentToday readers are familiar with my skepticism of many mobile metrics reports. Sampling problems, unstated assumptions, and plain old incorrect interpretations are common in many of these reports. comScore’s mobile market share report for January 2010 falls into the “where did those numbers come from” category. But, putting those concerns aside for the moment, what can we learn from their numbers?

comScore Reports January 2010 U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share

- Mobile OEMs: This category is too broad to provide any interesting information. And, having Motorola rank as #1 in the list makes me suspicious about this category

- Smartphone Platforms: No surprise here regarding rank order: RIM, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Palm. The shifts in marketshare with Microsoft and Palm losing relatively large percentages for a one quarter period (-4 and
-2.1%, respectively) makes sense. Google was the big winner in terms of change (+4.3%). But, it had practically nothing (2.8%) in October 2009 prior to Verizon’s big push for the Motorola

- Mobile Content Usage: No surprises with small gains across the board with text messaging and web browser at positions #1 and #2. It is interesting that listening to music on a moble phone was the lowest ranked category

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