More than half of US smartphone owners use an Android device: comScore

Google and Apple continue to dominate the smartphone market in the US. More than seven out of ten smartphone owners in the country own a device that runs on Google’s Android operating system or Apple’s iOS operating system.

Google and Apple continue to dominate the smartphone market in the US. More than seven out of ten smartphone owners in the country own a device that runs on Google's Android operating system or Apple's iOS operating system.

Research firm comScore reports that Android has grown to reach more than half of the installed smartphone user base (50.1 percent) for the first time in history, up 3.2 points from November 2011.

Apple's share of the smartphone market has increased too, up from 28.7 percent in November 2011 to 30.2 percent in February 2012.

Americans were not so enamored with smartphones running on Research In Motion's (RIM) and Microsoft's smartphone platforms. In the three-month period ending February 2012, RIM's BlackBerry OS lost 3.2 points to 13.4 percent and Microsoft's Windows Phone platform fell 1.3 points to just 3.9 percent of the US smartphone market.

During the three-month period ending in February, a total of 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices, 104 million of which owned smartphones, up 14 percent versus November said comScore.

A recent report by Nielsen found that smartphones account for close to 49.7 percent of all mobile phones in the US, up from 38 percent from the year before.

Samsung continued its reign as the most popular mobile phone manufacturer in the country, its handsets accounted for 25.6 percent of the entire market. LG saw a slight drop in handset purchases but maintained its place as the US's second leading OEM with 19.4 percent of all mobile subscribers.

Apple grew its share of mobile subscribers by 2.3 percentage points to 13.5 percent, overtaking Motorola (12.8 percent)to gain third place on the chart. HTC moved into fifth place with 6.3 percent (up 0.4 percentage points).