Google’s Android mobile operating system and Apple’s iPhone OS are gobbling up market share while Research In Motion (RIM), Microsoft and Palm are bleeding it, according to comScore’s latest figures.
For the three months ending December 2009, RIM, the maker of BlackBerry smartphones, was the top smartphone platform in the U.S. with 41.6 percent of the market, down 1.0 percentage point from 42.6 percent for the three months ending September 2009.
Apple was second with 25.3 percent, which was up 1.2 percentage points from 24.1 percent in the prior three-month period. Microsoft followed with 18.0 percent of the smartphone platform market, a 1.0-point loss from its 19.0 percent share in the previous three months.
Palm was fourth with 6.1 percent of the market for the three months ending in December, down 2.2 points from its 8.3 percent share in the previous period.
Meanwhile, Google’s Android platform finished with 5.2 percent of the market, up 2.7 percentage points from its 2.5 percent share in the previous three months.
Motorola was the top mobile original equipment manufacturer (OEM) in the U.S. for the three months ending in December, with 23.5 percent of the market, down 1.4 percentage points from its 24.9 percent share in the previous period.
LG was second with 21.9 percent of the market, up 0.2 points from its 21.7 percent share in the three months ending in September, while Samsung was third with 21.2 percent of the market, up 0.8 points from its 20.4 percent share in the prior period.
Nokia was fourth with 9.2 percent of the market, down 0.4 percentage points from its 9.6 percent share in the previous period, while RIM was fifth with 7.0 percent of the market, up 0.6 points from its 6.4 percent share in the prior period.
Sending text messages to another phone was the most popular form of mobile content usage, with 63.1 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers taking part during the three months ending in December, up 2.1 percentage points from the 61.0 percent in the three months ending in September.
Meanwhile, 27.5 percent used a mobile browser, up 1.5 points from 26.0 percent in the prior period. Playing games was third with 21.6 percent, up 0.2 percentage points from 21.4 percent, followed by using downloaded apps, which received a 17.8 percent response, up 1.1 points from 16.7 percent in the three months ending in September.
Accessing a social networking site or blog was next with 15.9 percent, up 2.1 percentage points from 13.8 percent in the previous period. Listening to music on a mobile phone was sixth on the list with 12.1 percent, up 0.4 points from 11.7 percent in the previous period.
comScore notes that 234 million people age 13 and older used mobile devices in the U.S. in December.
Source:
Network
