After Comscore’s latest monthly US smartphone data report it now appears that Google’s Android has finally succeeded in overthrowing Blackberry and iOS from the top of the consumer US’s share of smartphone subscribers. The report, which measured the usage of smartphones, established that 65.8 million people used smartphones in the US in the period from October last year to January this year, which is an 8% increase from the numbers from the preceding three month period. Android had surpassed the subscriber share of Apple’s iOS in the last three months’ usage data as well, however, it is the first time that the Google mobile platform has succeeded in replacing RIM’s blackberry brand from the top of the charts.
It is the first time that the Android platform has led the market in the mobile platform market in January after acquiring 31.2% share of the market that month, followed closely by RIM on its heels with a share of 30.4%. They were followed by Apple’s iOS taking a share of 24.7%. Microsoft and Palm are seen trailing far away with market shares of 8 and 3.2 percent respectively.
When considering the total usage of mobile devices, mobile devices in this period were used by 234 million Americans who were aged 13 and older. Samsung ranked first in terms of the manufacturers’ performance after raking in 24.9% of the US’s mobile subscribers in the market, showing an improvement of 0.7% from the last three month period which ended in October last year. The second spot was taken by LG with a share of 20.8% with Motorola, RIM and Apple following it with 16.5%, 8.6%, and 7% shares respectively. The consumption of mobile content by subscribers has been observed as having grown substantially with 68.1% of the mobile users having used text messaging in January and 37% using browsers on their mobile devices.
