Given the astronomical growth of the Android operating system, the latest numbers from comScore on the U.S. smartphone market don’t come as much of a surprise.
Android’s market share leaped more than 7 percentage points to 31.2 percent between October and January, putting the operating system in first place ahead of Research In Motion’s (RIM) BlackBerry platform and Apple’s iPhone.
ComScore reports indicate the operating system’s market share has more than quadrupled over the past year as carriers have released a bevy of popular Android-based smartphones, including Motorola’s Droid franchise with Verizon Wireless and Samsung’s Galaxy S lineup.
Android’s growth has eroded the portion of the market held by RIM’s BlackBerry devices and the iPhone. RIM’s market share slipped more than 5 percentage points over the last three months of 2010 to 30.4 percent, putting it in second place. The iPhone’s market share was nearly flat during the same period, gaining one-tenth of a percentage point to bring its share of the U.S. smartphone market to 24.7 percent.
Microsoft and Palm rounded out the top five U.S. operating systems, with 8 percent and 3.2 percent, respectively.
ComScore also reported market share numbers for U.S. device manufacturers. Nokia got knocked out of the top five spot as Apple’s market share reached 7 percent. Other than Apple’s ascension, the positions of the remaining top four OEMs in the United States remained steady. Samsung held its top spot with 24.9 percent, LG ranked second with 20.8 percent, followed by Motorola with 16.5 percent and RIM with 8.6 percent.
The numbers on smartphone and manufacturer market share came from comScore’s MobiLens service, which surveyed more than 30,000 wireless subscribers in the United States to track trends in the U.S. mobile phone industry during the last three months of 2010.
Filed Under: Devices
