It looks like there is yet again more data to support the trend Google’s Android platform is eating away at the share of other smartphone operating systems, including RIM and Apple. ComScore’s smartphone numbers were just released today, which measured smartphone usage from May until August. According to the recent data, 55.7 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in August, up 14 percent from the the May period.
While RIM was the most popular smartphone platform with 37.6 percent share of U.S. smartphone subscribers, followed by Apple with 24.2 percent share; Google continued to gain ground in the market, rising 6.6 percentage points to capture 19.6 percent of smartphone subscribers. In fact, RIM’s share dropped from 41.7 percent in the May period and Apple also saw a slight drop as well. Microsoft accounted for 10.8 percent of smartphone subscribers, while Palm rounded out the top five with 4.6 percent. All the platforms posted losses in share except for Android phones.
Consumer interaction with mobile phones increased for the time period as well. For the three months ending in August, nearly 67 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device, up 1.4 percent, while browsers were used by 34.5 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers (up 2.6 percent).
Consumers who were using downloaded applications made of nearly one-third of the mobile audience, representing an increase of 2.3 percent from the previous period. ComScore says the consumers who access social networking sites and blog is on the up, increasing 1.7 percentage points, representing 22.5 percent of mobile subscribers. Consumers listening to music remained flay, tising 0.4 percentage points, representing 14.7 percent of subscribers.
In total, 234 million Americans ages 13 and older used mobile devices for the period. In terms of device manufacturer share, Samsung continued to be the top handset manufacturer overall with 23.6 percent market share, followed by LG with 21.2 percent share. Motorola came in third (18.8 percent share), followed by RIM (9.0 percent share) and Nokia (7.6 percent share).