ComScore just released its smartphone market share numbers for March through May, and unsurprisingly the trend continues from previous months. Android phone saw the most significant growth in market share in May, up 4.0 percentage points to capture 13.0 percent of smartphone subscribers. Of course, despite Android’s gain, RIM and Apple dominated, with RIM taking 41.7 percent share of U.S. smartphone subscribers, followed by Apple with 24.4 percent share. Microsoft saw a 13.2 percent share and Palm rounded the top five out with a 4.8 percent share. In total, 49.1 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in May, up 8.1 percent from the corresponding February period.
In terms of manufacturer share, the report found Samsung to be the top handset manufacturer overall with 22.4 percent market share. LG ranked second with 21.5 percent share, followed by Motorola (21.2 percent share), RIM (8.7 percent share, up 0.5 percentage point) and Nokia (8.1 percent share).
For the three month period from March to May, comScore reports that 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices. Across the board, comScore’s numbers show mobile phone users in the U.S. are interacting more with their phones. In terms of actions, 65.2 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device in May, up 1.4 percent versus the prior three month period. Mobile browsing also increased to 31.9 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers (up 2.3 percentage points). Subscribers who used downloaded applications comprised 30.0 percent of the mobile audience, representing an increase of 2.1 percentage points from the previous period. Accessing of social networking sites or blogs also saw growth, increasing 2.6 percentage points to 20.8 percent of mobile subscribers.
While Android smartphones were the only type of phone to see a gain in market share for the three month period, the platform is still way behind Apple’s mobile user base. Android still has a ways to go in terms of market share before it can be seen as a major competitor to Apple, but it is nice to see that the platform is slowly gaining a larger user base.