• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, February 6, 2013

BlackBerry may get a boost from its rebranding and the launch of its new BlackBerry 10 handsets, but the company continued to lose ground against its smartphone rivals through the end of 2012. BlackBerry’s share among top smartphone platforms in the U.S. fell two percentage points to 6.4% for the three months ending in December, according to the latest comScore data.

At the same time, Google’s Android expanded its leading share to 53.4%, up 0.9% in the last three months, while Apple’s iOS picked up two points to reach 36.3%. Rounding out the top five were Micrososft’s Windows Phone platform, with 2.9% share, and Symbian, with 0.6%.

Among smartphone makers, Apple was by easily the largest manufacture in the U.S., with 36.3% market share. Samsung was second, with 21% share, followed by HTC (10.2%), Motorola (9.1%) and LG (7.1%). According to a Strategy Analytics report released last week, strong sales of the iPhone 5 also helped Apple surge past Samsung to become the biggest phone manufacturer overall in the fourth quarter.

Overall, comScore said 125.9 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones (54% penetration) during the three months ending in December, up 5% since September.