Whoa, Nelly, Motorola is now the third largest phone vendor in the United States, right after Apple and Samsung! Great job, Moto, how did you do it? It appears that Motorola has simply exploded and captured the lion's share of the market space left by LG when it left the mobile scene in July 2021.
Motorola phone market share in the United States
Coming and Coming
Fast forward two years and change, and Motorola now has a whopping 11% market share in the United States, according to the latest third quarter data from
Counterpoint. To put things into perspective, it now comes just after Apple with its 53%, or
Samsung with its 25%. Additionally, its parent company Lenovo sold more phones in the United States than the entire “Other” category combined for the first time.
United States telephony market share by brand
Motorola has managed to gobble up LG's market share in the United States with a rare combination of value-for-money handsets, including its flagship and foldable phone lines. It gives just a little more bang for the buck, like a bigger screen than Samsung on its Razr flip phones with foldable screens, or higher refresh rate displays than anyone else, all at very affordable prices.
That's not even talking about its lineup of affordable or mid-range handsets that it manages to stand out from the competition with perks like extraordinary battery life or stylus editions that don't break the bank, all unless from $500 and even less than $500. $300 segment.
Where Motorola doesn't shine, at least compared to the brands it now has to work to catch up to in the United States – Samsung or Apple – is its mediocre pace of Android software and security updates. It's not that this is an exception in terms of security update frequency – it's budget phones get 2 years of security patches, and its midrangers and flagships are on a 3 or 4 year program like so many other brands – but new versions of Android can take around a year to arrive.
Motorola's Android updates are up to par, but is it enough?
Segregation never did anyone any good
Since Google announced that it would offer many years of Android version and security updates to its own line of Pixel phones to distinguish it from its competitors, they have apparently taken note. By competitors, we primarily mean Samsung, as it now has four confirmed Android version upgrades and a five-year security patch cadence.
The undisputed champion is of course Google, as it should be.
We're committed to seven years of software support for Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, including the latest Android operating system, security updates, and ongoing feature drops.“, he announced, although his previous efforts failed to significantly increase its market share in the United States. As the guardian of Android, however, he must lead the way and inspire the others to also improve in terms of software support.
Motorola offers 2 years of patches for its budget phones, 3 years for most of its other handsets, and 4 years of security updates for some models in the Razr foldable line that competes directly with Samsung. This seems like a smart strategy in terms of resource balance, and is close to what everyone else in its brand category actually does, if not promises.
If it wants to take on Samsung in the US, however, it could devote a bit more resources to making its phones competitive, not only in terms of specs/price ratio, but also in terms of the intangible value added with features like software update frequency.
How important are phone software and security updates?
No matter the freezing of banking applications
If you ask the average phone owner in the United States how many software updates are promised with their phone, they won't know or really care. Apple and Samsung hold the vast majority of the market here, and they both have software support programs so generous that their owners have mostly forgotten that such concern can exist.
In general, though, updates are important for many reasons beyond just bringing new features to your phone. Software updates also fetch security responses that patch the code on your phone against the vulnerability of the day, triggered with malicious intent to exploit your information or directly to hack and steal. Banking and payment apps also check for the latest security patches and if your phone lags too far, they may stop working.
Yes, software support has now become one of the biggest issues segregating Android phones as even some branded phones offer version upgrade and two years of security patches. Brands often cite the software update schedule they maintain for their flagship products, but when looking through the portfolio, the update system becomes more patched and less frequent. While some shiny towns on the software update hill insist on the 5-7 year support program, most are 2-3 years, with only some handsets guaranteed more.
What would Google do?
I should have, I could, I would
Should Motorola offer more frequent updates to stand out from the rest in the value for money category? It could. Is this necessary? Not really, since its market share continues to grow. Plus, its update schedule doesn't seem to bother its fans too much and stop people from buying its phones.
If Motorola wants to take on the most popular Android vendor in the US, but its 2022 Moto Edge flagship only just received last year's Android 13 build, just a little extra effort in update cadence day could go a long way to improving its profile in the battle against the Apple-Samsung duopoly, if only for the sake of the brands era.
What do you think, would the fact that Motorola phones have a lesser software support system than Samsung or Apple make you pause before grabbing one of its high value phones in the next list of 2024?
