comScore has recently released its quarterly report on smartphone usage in the United States. While Research in Motion's BlackBerry OS and Apple's iOS remained the top two mobile platforms, Google's Android came out as the only one with a gain in market share in the last three months.
Although Android was still the fourth largest smartphone platform, the open-source OS saw a healthy quarter-to-quarter jump in market share while others slightly declined, according to comScore's latest statistics. During the three-month period ending in May, it experienced a 4-percentage point increase to 13 percent. With only 0.2 percentage point behind Microsoft's Windows Mobile, it is very likely that Android will take the third place in the next period.
Meanwhile, the overall ranking of top smartphone platforms stayed the same. RIM dropped a little from 42.1 percent to 41.7 percent, but still held a safe lead of the market. In the runner-up spot was Apple with 24.4 percent. But without the help of its latest hit device iPhone 4, which was launched in June, its share fell 1 percentage point. Microsoft, the fourth, saw a 1.9 point decrease down to 13.2 percent, while Palm, the fifth, lost 0.6 point to 4.8 percent.
In spite of the fact that most operating systems lost market share in the last three months, comScore noted that they have actually gained subscribers as demand for smartphones continue to grow. According to the research company, the number of Americans who owned a smartphone has increased by 8.1 percent to 49.1 million compared to the previous period.
In terms of the whole cell phone market in the U.S., Samsung regained the top manufacturer position with a 22.4 percent share of the market, closely followed by LG with 21.5 percent and Motorola with 21.2 percent. RIM and Nokia rounded out the top five, accounting for 8.7 percent and 8.1 percent of all handsets respectively.
With the inclusion of new high-profile smartphones like iPhone 4, Motorola Droid X and Samsung Captivate, it would be interesting to see how things will end up three months later.
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