After several months of strong growth, Google's Android mobile operating system has finally replaced Apple's iOS as the second place in the U.S. smartphone market for the first time, industry analysis firm comScore revealed in its latest report.
According to comScore's new data, Android gained 6.4 percentage points in market share during the three-month period ending November 2010, and now commands 26 percent of the market, making it the second largest mobile platform in the United States. The rise of Android dropped iOS into the third place with a 25 percent share, though the figure is also slightly up by 0.8 percentage point. Back in August 2010, Apple still managed to hold 24.2 percent of the smartphone market, beating Android's 19.6 percent share by 4.6 percentage points.
The leading smartphone platform title still belongs to Research in Motion, who accounted for 33.5 percent of the mobile OS market, but its share was noticeably down by 4.1 percentage points from three months ago. Microsoft's Windows Mobile, the No. 4, also fell 1.8 percent to 9 percent, and Palm, the No. 5, dropped 0.7 percent to 3.9 percent. Obviously, these companies had been losing their share to Android and iOS.
In the meantime, there was no significant change in terms of the ranking among mobile phone manufacturers. While Samsung dominated the industry with 24.5 percent share, it is also the only phone maker that posted a gain (0.7 percent). The other four of the top five all saw declining trends: LG lost 0.3 percent to 20.9 percent, Motorola fell 1.8 percent to 17 percent, RIM dropped 0.2 percent to 8.8 percent, and Nokia was down by 0.4 percent to 7.2 percent.
Although most mobile platforms and handset manufacturers had suffered from a drop in the past few months, the overall mobile phone market continued to boom because of increasing smartphone shipments. By the end of November 2010, there were 61.5 million smartphone owners in the U.S., up 10 percent from the period ending August. With the popularity of smartphones continuing its upward movement, we could expect to see favorable figures in the next report as well.
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