T-Mobile's iPhone sales boost Apple's iOS market share

T-Mobile US' (NYSE:TMUS) ability to finally sell the Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone to its subscribers helped boost the Apple iOS platform's market share by 3.5 percent during the three months ending in May, according to new research from Kantar Worldpanel.

Kantar found that T-Mobile's iPhone sales helped Apple increase its iOS platform's share, narrowing the gap with rival Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android platform, which gained just 0.1 percent share in the same quarter.

T-Mobile started selling Apple's iPhone in mid-April, and the company said on May 8 that it had already sold 500,000 units of the device, an indication of the pent-up demand for it. Kantar said the iPhone sales accounted for 31 percent of T-Mobile's total smartphone sales. This compares to 60.5 percent of AT&T Mobility's (NYSE:T) smartphone sales and 43.8 percent of Verizon Wireless' (NYSE:VZ) smartphone sales.

Nevertheless, Android remains the leader, powering 52 percent of all smartphones sold in the United States during the three-month period ending in May 2013. This number is virtually unchanged from 51.9 percent in the year-earlier period, according to Kantar. iOS trails behind with 41.9 percent of sales, an increase from 38.4 percent a year earlier. Meanwhile, Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows Phone follows at 4.6 percent, increasing from 3.7 percent in the three-month stretch concluding in May 2012, while BlackBerry (NASDAQ:BBRY) plummeted from 4.6 percent to just 0.7 percent.

For more:
- see this release
- see this FierceMobileContent article

Related articles:
T-Mobile confirms price hike for iPhone 5 to $150
T-Mobile crows of 'gangbusters' store traffic as iPhone 5 goes on sale
Kantar: iPhone, Windows Phone sales growing faster than Android
IDC: Windows Phone shipments vault past BlackBerry in Q1
Gartner: Android fuels 75 percent of Q1 smartphone sales, iPhone loses ground