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Motorola is the leading handset manufacturer in the United States, while BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion leads the smartphone space, according to market research firm comScore.
Google also is gaining share in the smartphone space, though Microsoft is slipping a bit, comScore said March 10 in a report detailing trends in the U.S. mobile phone industry during a three-month timeframe from October 2009 to January.
comScore found that 234 million Americans 13 years and older are mobile subscribers, and among them, Motorola was a top mobile phone choice, commanding 22.9 percent of the market share, followed by LG, with 21.7 percent, Samsung, with 21.1 percent, Nokia with 9.1 percent and RIM with 7.8 percent.
The ranking order was consistent with an earlier report, with a three-month time frame ending in October 2009, though between the two reports, Motorola, LG and Nokia each dropped small amounts of percentage points, while Samsung and RIM rose slightly.
The latest report additionally found smartphones to be used by 42.7 million U.S. adults. Among them, 43 percent favor RIM handsets, while Apple grabbed 25.1 percent market share, Microsoft held 15.7 percent, Google 7.1 percent and Palm 5.1 percent.
The biggest changes, from the period three months earlier, were felt by Microsoft, which dropped 4 points, and Google, which rose 4.3 points.
Those millions of mobile subscribers also texted more, surfed more and accessed social networking sites with greater frequency than they had three months earlier.
“In an average month during the November through January 2010 time period, 63.5 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device, up 1.5 percentage points versus three months prior,” comScore wrote in the report. “Browsers were used by 28.6 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers (up 1.8 percentage points), while subscribers who played games made up 21.7 percent (up 0.4 percentage points).”
As for social networking sites, or blogs, mobile subscribers accessed them 3.3 percent more than they did three months earlier, totaling 17.1 of subscribers.
In the coming months, expect the number of smartphone users to continue heading upward – a trend that Forrester Research has additionally pointed to. According to a Jan. 6 report from Forrester, smartphone growth won’t peter off until the devices are in the hands of more than 70 percent of U.S. workers.