Samsung top U.S. handset manfacturer and Android top U.S. platform in latest comScore survey

Analytical firm comScore has just released the results of its latest survey, covering 30,000 U.S. mobile phone owners above the age of 13. The survey, covering the last three months ending in March, found Samsung to be the top U.S. cell phone manufacturer with a 24.5% market share. That was a slight .3% drop from the previous survey which ended in December. Runner-up is fellow Korean firm LG which finished with a 20.9% slice of the U.S. cell phone pie. That reading matched the market share that LG had achieved in the last survey. Motorola (15.8%), RIM (8.4%) and Apple (7.9%) round out the top 5. Apple had the biggest increase in the period, with a market share that rose 1.1% over the three months.

The smartphone platform with the biggest marketshare in the U.S. is Android. Google's open source OS has 34.7% of the market, up sharply from a 28.7% share in the quarter that ended in December. That gain in marketshare enabled Android to take the top spot from RIM. The latter dropped from a leading 31.6% piece of the pie to a 27.1% reading. Apple remained in third place with a marketshare of 25.5%, up from December's 25%. Microsoft and Palm were fourth and fifth with control of 7.5% and 2.8% respectively, of the U.S. smartphone market.

So what do Americans older than 13 do with their smartphone? A whopping 68.6% use their phone to send and receive text messages to another phone while a surprisingly low 38.6% use the browser. Downloading apps is something enjoyed by 37.3% of U.S. smartphone users. Accessing social networks was done by 27.3% of smartphone owners in the States. 25.7% played games and 15.7% listened to music. The percentages were very close to the readings seen in the last survey which ended last December.

source: comScore via WSJ