Apple tops US smartphone rankings

There is nothing that riles my ire like data taken or given without context (or out of it). That's the case with new smartphone data released today by ComScore. The chart above is more or less self-explanatory. Well, at first glance it is.

"During the three months ending in May 2011, 76.8 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones", according to a ComScore Data Mine blog post. "Among smartphone owners, Apple accounted for 26.6 percent of devices". Research in Motion ranks second.

But in the broader market, as revealed by ComScore last week using the same three-month data set, Apple ranks fourth, behind Samsung, LG and Motorola. In terms of smartphone OS share, Android is 38.1 percent to Apple's 26.6 percent. That's some of the context missing from today's blog post.

But there's more. Apple sells three iPhone models -- $49 3GS, $199 v4 16GB and $299 v4 32GB -- on two of the US' major carriers, AT&T and Verizon. The question Apple and AT&T have skirted is how many are the cheaper, older 3GS.

Last week, Localytics extrapolated data claiming that Verizon accounts for 32 percent of iPhone 4s. Based on published activations from AT&T and Verizon, it's possible to guesstimate the number of 3GSs sold since iPhone 4 launched last year -- since Verizon only sells iPhone 4. I won't bother today, since both carriers haven't announced second calendar quarter earnings and with them brought iPhone activations figures up to date. Doing some rough crunching based on previously released activations, I expect the number should be surprising.