comScore: Android marches on as iPhone and BlackBerry falter

by Stevie Smith - Jul 9 2010, 04:31

The latest batch of quarterly performance figures covering mobile operating systems in the U.S. market have revealed that Google Android is continuing its march towards smartphone dominance, according to research firm comScore.

More specifically, while the overall smartphone market has maintained notable growth during the last three months, the Android operating system has posted a clear gain while rival software offered via the likes of Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s BlackBerry devices are on the decline.

In terms of comScore’s quarterly winner and losers, Android’s market share rose from nine percent to 13 percent, while market-leading BlackBerry phones fell from 42.1 percent to 41.7 percent and Apple’s iPhone operating system fell from 25.4 percent to 24.4 percent.

Although Apple’s market share appears to be going in the wrong direction – which doesn’t exactly tally with June’s hugely successful launch of the iPhone 4 – it’s worth noting that comScore’s period of measurement (Feb through May) falls short of the iPhone 4’s arrival.

The iPhone 4 represents “the most successful product launch in Apple’s history,” commented company CEO Steve Jobs after the fourth iteration of Apple’s iconic smartphone sold 1.7 million units within three days of its June 24 release.

Both Microsoft and Palm also registered significant losses over the quarter, with the former dropping from 15.1 percent to 13.2 percent, and the latter falling from 5.4 percent to 4.8 percent.

Despite the apparent downward trend affecting most of the players in the smartphone operating system market, the overall smartphone sector is up 8.1 percent for the quarter, which equates to some 49.1 million handset owners across the United States.

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