comScore released its monthly smartphone mobile report today, which continues to show that the Android OS is eating away at smartphone market share reach from Apple’s iOS and RIM’s BlackBerry OS. The data, which measured smartphone usage from July until October of this year, showed that 60.7 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during period, up 14 percent from the preceding three month period. comScore says that the 1 out of every 4 mobile subscribers are using a smartphone.
Similar to the data from last month, RIM took the top spot as the leading mobile smartphone platform in the U.S. with 35.8 percent share of U.S. smartphone subscribers, which is down 3.5 percent from the last period. Apple followed with 24.6 percent share (up 0.8 percentage points). Google’s Android OS saw the strongest growth, rising 6.5 percentage points to capture 23.5 percent of smartphone subscribers. Microsoft accounted for 9.7 percent of smartphone subscribers, while Palm accounts for 3.9 percent.
Device manufacturers data showed that Samsung took the top spot as the leading OEM with 24.2 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers, up 1.1 percentage points from the previous period. LG ranked second with 21 percent share, followed by Motorola (17.7 percent share), RIM (9.3 percent share) and Nokia (7.1 percent share).
Additionally, 68.1 percent of mobile phone owners users text messaging, up 2.1 percentage points. Browsers were used by 36.2 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers (up 2.6 percentage points). Users who used downloaded applications comprised 33.7 percent of the mobile audience, representing an increase of 2.3 percent. The percentage of users playing games and and listening to music also increased slightly, while listening to music increased 0.9 percentage points, representing 15.4 percent of subscribers.
It’s important to note that this data indicates reach as opposed to units sold. That being said, Android phones seem to growing by a number of different measures, including consumer interest, and sales. And this is a reflection of both a greater interest in Android phones as well as a growth in overall smartphone usage.