• by Aaron Baar , July 9, 2010

Americans continue to love their cell phones, and they're beginning to fall even more in love with their smartphones. According to comScore's MobiLens, 234 million Americans 13 and older used mobile devices between March and May 2010, and smartphone usage increased 8.1%.

Samsung increased its lead as the top handset in the U.S. with a 22.4% market share (up 1% from the previous three-month period), LG ranked second with a 21.5% share (down 0.2%), followed by Motorola (21.2%, down 1%), RIM (8.7%, up 0.5%) and Nokia (8.1%, down 0.5%).

Smartphone usage increased 8.1% during those three months, with 49.1 million people in the U.S. using the devices during the three-month period. RIM continued to lead the sector with a 41.7% share (down 0.4%), followed by Apple (24.4%, down 1%), Microsoft (13.2%, down 1.9%), Google (13%, up 4%) and Palm (4.8%). Google's 4% increase illustrates the quick adoption of the Android operating system. However, most of the makers continue to increase volume sales, due to the rapid growth of the overall sector, according to comScore.

The use of the mobile unit as an overall communication device continued as well. Nearly two-thirds of mobile subscribers used their phones for text messaging (up 1.4%), and nearly a third (31.9%) used them for web browsing (up 2.3%). Thirty percent used downloaded applications (up 2.1%) and 20.8% of users accessed social networking sites or blogs from their phones (up 2.6% over the previous period).