iPhone 5 Usage Surpasses Samsung Galaxy S III Less than 3 Weeks on Market
Apple and Samsung are unquestionably two of the top players in smartphone marketplace. Following the release of Apple's iPhone 5 on September 21st, Chitika Insights was interested in comparing the Web usage rates of the newest phones from both manufacturers.
Context & Ripple Effects
The scoreboard flipped twice in five weeks. In early September, Samsung's Galaxy S III overtook the iPhone 4S as the top-selling US smartphone — the first time an Android flagship had claimed that spot. Apple answered with the September 21 iPhone 5 launch, which by comScore's count had already matched the iPhone 4S's first-month online sales within three days (same sales level in 3 days that the 4S needed a month to reach).
Chitika Insights adds a third lens: not units sold but actual web usage measured across its ad network, where the iPhone 5 passed the Galaxy S III in under three weeks on market. The finding traveled widely — TechCrunch, GigaOM, MacRumors, 9to5Mac, Marketing Land and Daring Fireall all picked it up — because it reframes the Apple-Samsung race as one measured per launch cycle rather than per quarter.
First-order effects
- Apple regains the 'most-used smartphone' claim weeks after losing the top-seller spot to Samsung, giving its marketing a usage-share counterpoint to the Galaxy S III's unit-sales lead.
- Advertisers and publishers on networks like Chitika's see their iOS traffic mix shift toward the newest iPhone almost immediately, since usage share tracks active devices faster than quarterly sell-through numbers do.
Second-order effects
- Samsung's counter is product cadence rather than rebuttal: keeping a fresh flagship in market is how it defends the unit-sales crown while Apple's launch spike runs.
- The dueling metrics invite a supply-side race — AppleInsider's syndicated reporting flags rumors of Apple expanding iPhone production through a Foxconn subsidiary, unconfirmed, aimed at converting launch demand into sustained volume.
Third-order effects
- Smartphone leadership is becoming a rolling, multi-metric contest — unit sales, online sales velocity, and web-usage share each tell a different winner's story — turning every flagship launch into a fresh leaderboard reset between Apple and Samsung.
- If usage-based panels keep diverging from sell-through trackers, the industry's 'best-selling phone' title loses its single arbiter, and analysts will increasingly cite whichever metric favors their narrative.
The trend: The Apple-Samsung rivalry is shifting from annual market-share verdicts to a per-launch-cycle contest scored across unit sales, sales velocity, and web-usage share.