RIM's OS leads U.S. Market Share with Apple trailing

A monthly survey taken by comScore shows that 36 million Americans own a smartphone while 196 million own a featurephone. As of October-the latest month that data is available-RIM was the leader in the U.S. with about 41%  (about 15 million users) of the OS market share. In second with 25% of the smartphone OS market share is Apple with Microsoft's Windows Mobile coming in third. The survey tracks U.S. mobile phone users over the age of 13. Palm, Symbian and Android round out the rest of the top 6.

The latest trend over the past three months ending in October shows tremendous growth by RIM and Apple. In the first week of November, the nation's top cellular carrier, Verizon, launched its first two Android devices as the Motorola DROID became a best seller with great reviews. This should change things dramatically when the survey is released next month and we should get a look at which OS is losing ground-if any-to Android.

source: comScore via FierceDeveloper (Chart), (Data)