State by State: The Most Popular Android Phones in the US

Samsung phones dominate the Android scene in the US. Which one is the most common in your state?

Everything's bigger out west: the houses, the cars, and the phones, too. While the Samsung Galaxy S8 dominates Android use in a swath of northern and eastern states (and Hawaii), the Southwest and West Coast are faithful to the bigger Galaxy Note 9, according to an analysis of data from the Ookla Speedtest mobile application.

The most popular phone model that took tests on Ookla's Speedtest in every state was an iPhone—specifically, the Apple iPhone X. With 48.3 percent overall market share in August 2019, according to Statista and Comscore, and far fewer models than the range of Android devices, it's no surprise that when you look for the most common single model in the US, it comes up iPhone.

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Going Android-only, though, we knew we were going to get a Samsung map. The US phone market is by and large a duopoly. Between the two, Apple and Samsung own 76.3 percent of the market, according to Statista. After Samsung's 28 percent market share, the next manufacturer is LG, with a mere 8.8 percent.

Why the Galaxy S8 and Note 9? More recent Samsung models are still popular—they just aren't the most popular. The Galaxy S8 featured a design change, a curved screen on a long, skinny body, and people have had two years to buy them. The S9 and S10 generations, while improving speed and adding cameras, haven't been enough of a sea change for New Yorkers and Ohioans to ditch their reliable S8s en masse.

According to Counterpoint Research, the Galaxy S10 had a "solid launch" but "is now seeing signs of weakness." Even if the S10 continues to be a strong seller, it'll probably take a year to catch up to the S8. But I anticipate things are going to get more confusing in 2020, when carriers start to aggressively push a 5G-compatible Galaxy S11 model and sales split over various S10 and S11 units.

It's a little more surprising to see that the Galaxy Note 9 is so popular in so many states, considering it was Samsung's most expensive model last year. My theory on that has to do with the disastrous Note 7, which caught on fire and was recalled. Galaxy Note 7 buyers loved their phones, but they had to return them—and they may have taken a pass on the Note 8 to wait and see if the Note line was still okay. The Note 9 series tapped into a huge, pent-up demand among Galaxy Note lovers. In Connecticut and South Dakota, meanwhile, people have gone over to the Galaxy S9+.

Methodology: To create this map, we analyzed results from approximately one million Android devices that used the Speedtest mobile app during the month of October 2019. Ookla is a sibling company of PCMag.com; both companies are owned by J2 Global.