Android grows US smartphone market share

08:42 | Friday July 9, 2010

The numbers come from comScore, which states that Android's share increased by 4% in the period.

This places it just behind Microsoft's 13.2%, which experienced a drop of 1.9%.

The growth of Android appears to be at the expense of the other mobile operating systems. Market leaders BlackBerry (41.7% share) and Apple (24.4%) both saw their share decline slightly in the period - by 0.4% and 1% respectively.

There are now 49.1m smartphone owners in the US, an increase of 8.1m from the three months to February 2010.

In related news, analyst company Ovum reports that Apple controlled 67% of the app download market last year but forecasts this will drop to 22% by 2015 as Android overtakes it.

Nokia's Symbian platform will see its share of the apps market grow from 9% in 2009 to 19% in 2015.

BlackBerry, meanwhile, will grow from 5% to 17%, but the big winner will be Android. Ovum forecasts its 14% share of the app download market last year will grow to 26%, putting it ahead of Apple.

The total global market for apps will, according to Ovum, jump from 2.69bn in 2009 to 21.3bn by 2015.