Market research firm comScore has published its latest US Smartphone Subscriber Market Share report, including some data points that we can use to gauge the opportunity ahead for the Apple Music streaming service.
According to comScore, in the second quarter of 2015, Apple accounted for 44.2% of American smartphone users. There are 191.4m of the latter, which indicates around 84.6m iPhone owners in the US, compared to Android’s market share of 51.4%, or 98.4m people.
A separate chart published alongside these figures breaks down the top smartphone apps in the US by their reach across iPhone and Android, led by Facebook’s 73.3% reach (so around 134.1m people – this isn’t 73.3% of the 191.4m total smartphone users, but 73.3% of the 183m iPhone and Android users).
14th place in the chart is occupied by Apple Music, which to save confusion, relates to Apple’s ‘Music’ app that’s preloaded on every iPhone, rather than the streaming service ‘Apple Music’.
According to comScore’s survey, Apple’s Music app has a 24.1% reach on iPhone and Android – 44.1m people who are all using it on iPhones, since it’s not available for Android.
In short, around 52% of iPhone owners are using the preloaded music app, and it’s those people who in theory are the obvious addressable base for the Apple Music streaming service. Although insert your own speculation here about how many of the remaining 48%, rather than not being music listeners, have ditched Apple’s app for Spotify, Pandora or other services.
Actually, some of those other services are in comScore’s chart too. YouTube, for example, is used by 59.3% of American iPhone and Android owners – around 108.5m people. Pandora is used by 43.9%, so around 80.3m people.
Spotify isn’t in the top 15, but that’s no surprise: 15th-ranked Snapchat has a 21.9% reach, so 40m American iPhone and Android owners. Spotify won’t be at that level any time soon.
Still, the key message from the comScore survey is that at least half of iPhone owners should be prompted to try Apple Music in its trial form – so those 11m early trial-members globally really was just the start.
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