NPD: Apple holds 42% of US market, Samsung 26%

The smartphone adoption in the US market is growing and two companies are coming out the big winners out of it – Apple and Samsung together hold over 60% of the market in the last quarter of last year, up from 52% in the final quarter of 2012.

It's a one sided matchup, however, as Apple alone holds 42% market share, a large increase from the 35% share it had in Q4 2012. Samsung is doing well for itself too, going from 22% in Q4 '12 to 26% in Q4 '13.

LG saw a small increase in its share but still controls under 10% of the market. The NPD Group, which prepared the market share report, doesn’t go into details of how much this is due to the company's Nexus involvement (LG build both the Nexus 4 and 5).

While the Google-branded Nexus may have helped LG, the Google ownership of Motorola did not and the company went from over 10% market share to about equal with LG. All other companies declined.

HTC experienced a sharp drop in a year, though not as sharp as BlackBerry, which got its share almost completely evaporated. Even the makers collectively market as "Other" in the report have declined, which points to a homogenization of the market – Apple in front, with Samsung as a distant second.

What US users do with all those smartphones is use more and more data apparently. The average data usage per month went up to 6.6GB (from 5.5GB in Q4 2012). Half of smartphone owners now use some form of music streaming (up from around 40%).

Pandora was the most popular streaming service, with iHeart Radio coming in second. With growing adoption, it's no surprise that more and more companies are trying to get into the streaming market, like Beats Music.

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