Apple remained the #2 smartphone vendor in the U.S., but Google’s Android platform is making gains on all of the players in the smartphone market. That, according to analytics firm comScore, which released data for the three months ending in May of 2010, data that is based on carrier subscriptions.
According to comScore, Apple’s iPhone platform had 24.4% of the market for smartphones in the U.S. That’s enough to keep the company firmly in first place behind Research (RIM) in Motion’s BlackBerry, with 41.7%, but both of those companies fell compared to the prior three month period ending in February. RIM dropped .3%, while Apple fell 1%, according to the comScore report.
Microsoft also fell — more than any other company — dropping 1.9% from 15.1% of the U.S. market to 13.2%, but that still left Windows Mobile in third place, which means that Google, for all the hype Android has been getting, is only the #4 smartphone platform in the U.S.
On the other hand, Android was the only platform in the top five covered by the report to show any gains, and those gains were significant, rising from 9% to 13% of the U.S. smartphone market. So while Google lags far behind Apple in the smartphone race, the company is making impressive gains fueled in part by having many different manufacturers making handsets that run on all the major carriers.
Rounding out the top five is Palm, which fell from 5.4% of the market in the period ending in February to 4.8% for the period ending in May. Palm is now owned by HP, which has announced plans for a new tablet based on Palm’s Web OS.
As noted in comScore’s caveat in the above chart, because this data covers the three months ending in May, it does not include Apple’s successful iPhone 4 launch, which took place in June. The iPhone 4 won’t be a part of comScore’s model until the next report is released for the three month period that will end in August of 2010, a report we aren’t likely to see until September or October.