comScore: Android Boosts Smartphone Share

Google's Android continued to increase its dominance of the smartphone market, with its share growing to 41.8% for the three months ending July -- up from 36.4% from April, according to new comScore data. Its share is up about one percentage point from June.

Apple's iOS bolstered its hold on the No. 2 slot, increasing its share one percentage point to 27% over the last three months, while other smartphone competitors continued to lose ground. BlackBerry maker Research in Motion fell four percentage points to 21.7%, followed by Microsoft -- which dropped from 6.7% to 5.7% -- and Symbian, down .4% to 1.9% in July.

Among the largest handset manufacturers, there was little change in market share from the prior reporting period. The biggest shift was Motorola's share, contracting from 15.6% to 14.1%. Earlier this month, Google announced plans to acquire the struggling company for $12.5 billion, chiefly to acquire its portfolio of 17,000 patents.

Samsung remained the No. 1 phone maker with 25.5% share, up from 24.5% in April. LG was second, with 20.9%, unchanged from three months ago, followed by Motorola, Apple, at 9.5% (up 1.2 points), and RIM, which dropped slightly from 8.2% to 7.6%.

Looking at mobile content usage, 70% of U.S. wireless subscribers used text messaging, 41.1% browsed the mobile Web, 40.6% downloaded apps, 30.1% accessed a social networking site or blog, 27.8% played a game, and 20.3% listened to music. The biggest jump among those categories was in app downloads, where activity increased 2.8 points from April.

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