Google's Android surged past Apple's iPhone last quarter and is closing in on the Blackberry as the most popular smartphone platform in the United States, market tracking firm comScore said on February 7. According to comScore, 63.2 million Americans owned smartphones at the end of December, up 60 percent from a year earlier.
Google's Android mobile operating system was next with a 28.7 percent of the smartphone market at the end of December, up from 21.4 percent at the end of September. Apple was third with 25.0 percent of the market, down from 24.3 percent the previous quarter, according to comScore.
Microsoft software was running on 8.4 percent of the smartphones in the United States, down from 9.9 percent the previous quarter, comScore said, and Palm, which is owned by Hewlett-Packard, saw its market share slip to 3.7 percent from 4.2 percent the previous quarter.