• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, February 2, 2012

Android is closing in on 50% share of U.S. smartphones, according to the latest data from comScore. The Google mobile platform expanded its presence to 47.3% of handsets in the fourth quarter, up from 44.8% the prior quarter. Apple’s iOS picked up about 2 percentage points in the last three months of 2011 to reach 29.6% market share, still well behind Android.

Other competitors continued to lose ground, with BlackBerry dropping from 18.9% to a 16% share, Windows Mobile/Windows Phone, slipping a point to 4.7%, and Symbian shrinking to just 1.4%. That’s getting close to extinction.

Overall, 97.9 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in December, representing 40% of all mobile subscribers, according to comScore. That figure is somewhat below Nielsen’s estimate of 44% smartphone penetration in the U.S.

In terms of mobile content use, nearly three-quarters (74.3%) of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device in December, up 3.2 percentage points from September. Mobile Web use increased about almost five points to 47.5% and mobile social networking grew about four points to 35.3%.