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Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android operating system grabbed a 41.8 percent U.S. smartphone market share for July, up nearly two percentage points from its June count of 40 percent and nearly four points from its 38 percent share from May.
The company increased its lead over Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iOS, Research In Motion’s (NASDAQ:RIMM) BlackBerry and other smartphone platforms, said comScore Aug. 30. iOS grabbed 27 percent share, up from 26.6 percent share in June.
Beyond, the nasty legal imbroglios between Apple and Android OEMs Samsung, HTC and Motorola, an intriguing battle is shaping up for this fall.
Samsung unveiled its Galaxy S II handsets, which are lighter, thinner and faster than their predecessors, from AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile Aug. 30 in Manhattan. The launch came after Samsung sold more than 5 million of the high-end Android 2.3 “Gingerbread” smartphones in less than three months in Korea, Japan and Europe.
The Galaxy S II will have a stiff challenger in Apple’s iPhone 5 when it launches in September or October, possibly on Sprint’s network in addition to AT&T and Verizon.
The rest of the U.S. smartphone market isn’t faring so well. BlackBerry fell to 21.7 percent share, down from 23.4 percent in June and from 24.7 percent in May. RIM just launched the BlackBerry Bold 9900/9930, hoping to woo enterprise customers with its new Blackberry 7 OS-based handset.
Microsoft Windows Mobile grabbed 5.7 percent share, down a tick from the last period. The company expects to stabilize its smartphone market share hemorrhaging with its Windows Phone 7 platform.
Though WP7 is a vastly improved platform, Canalys estimated that Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) shipped less than 1.5 million smartphones in Q2 for only a 1 percent global market share. Microsoft believes that will change once smartphones running its “Mango” update become available this fall.
Nokia has bet bold on WP7 and is launching several WP7 handsets in 2012 as it seeks to slough off Symbian and attack the smartphone market anew.
Meanwhile, comScore said 82.2 million people in the United States owned smartphones through July, up 10 percent from the preceding three month period. Some 70 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device, while browsers were used by 41 percent of subscribers, followed by downloaded applications at 40.6 percent.