Android smartphones surge to 42% share

Computerworld - Google's Android operating system remained the No. 1 smartphone platform in the U.S., as its market share rose 5.4 percentage points to nearly 42%, according to the latest ComScore survey, released Tuesday.

The Apple iPhone's second-place share rose from 26% in the three-month period that ended April 30 to 27% in the quarter that ended July 31, according to ComScore's survey of 30,000 U.S. subscribers.

Meanwhile, Research In Motion and Microsoft saw their mobile platforms lose market share. RIM's BlackBerry platform remained in third place, but its share of the market fell from 25.7% to 21.7%. Microsoft, which makes the Windows Mobile and Windows Phone mobile operating systems, stayed in fourth place as its market share fell 1 percentage point to 5.7%.

A drop in market share does not necessarily mean a vendor sold fewer smartphones than it did in the previous three-month period, since the smartphone market is growing impressively. ComScore noted that 82.2 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones in July, an increase of 10% from the prior three-month period.

There were 234 million users of all types of mobile devices, including smartphones and lower-end feature phones, in the three-month period ending in July, according to ComScore. Samsung is the leading maker of mobile phones, with market share of 25.5% share, followed by LG (20.9%), Motorola (14.1%), Apple (9.5%) and RIM (7.6%).

Texting was the most popular use of mobile devices; 70% of the respondents to ComScore's survey said they text. Browsing (41%) was No. 2, followed by using downloaded apps (40.6%), social networking or blogging (30%), game-playing (28%) and listening to music (20%).

Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at @matthamblen, or subscribe to Matt's RSS feed. His email address is mhamblen@computerworld.com.

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