Android, iPhone still top U.S. smartphones, Nielsen says

Computerworld - Android again was the dominant mobile operating system among U.S. mobile subscribers in the third quarter, while Apple was still the largest smartphone maker, Nielsen reported Tuesday.

All told, Android had 42.8% of the smartphone market. Android phones from HTC accounted for 15% of the overall smartphone market, Samsung Android phones had market share of 10.1% and Motorola Android phones had 10.4%. Android phones from other companies accounted for 7.2% of the market.

Apple, with its iOS-based iPhone, was well ahead of any single Android maker, with 28.3% of the market. Research In Motion, with its BlackBerry operating system, had the second largest share, at 17.8%. Microsoft's Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7 platforms accounted for 6.1% of the market. Neilsen based its findings on surveys of 22,200 U.S. mobile subscribers.

Android and iPhone users combined to make up 71% of the market. Nielsen found that the two groups downloaded 83% of all mobile apps downloaded in the prior 30 days.

Forty-four percent of all U.S. mobile phone users now have smartphones, Nielsen said. For the period of roughly the second quarter, Nielsen said 40% of mobile users owned smartphones and that 40% of those users had Android devices. That figure is about three percentage points below the third-quarter result. In the second-quarter time frame, the iPhone had 28% of the market and BlackBerry devices had 19%.

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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