SmartPhone market led by Motorola, Rim with Apple on the rise.

ComScore latest report on the Smartphone market shows that Motorola and Rim are still the leaders with Apple showing a steady rise. Both the Apple iPhone and the Android show a steady gain in market share.

Moreover, there seems to be plenty of room for more big gains. ComScore said just 17% of mobile phone users had smartphones at the end of 2009, up from 11% at the end of 2008.

Palm and Microsoft -- the latter with its Windows Mobile platform devices -- continued their slide, with Palm garnering 6.1% of the smartphone market and Microsoft, 18%. Nokia, which has some 40% of the global smartphone market, didn't make it into the top five U.S. providers. However, the European-based handset provider did capture 9.2% of the overall mobile phone market in the United States.
"A total of 234 million people age 13 and older in the U.S. used mobile devices in December 2009," comScore said in releasing the results for the fourth quarter of 2009. "Device manufacturer Motorola was the top-ranked OEM with 23.5% of U.S. mobile devices." While Motorola still has a strong family of mid-range handsets, it didn't break into the top five smartphone suppliers even though its new Android handsets are beginning to make their mark in the category.
In the mid-range category, LG and Samsung each captured slightly more than 20% of the market followed by Nokia (9.2%) and RIM (7%).

Smartphone Platform Market Share

RIM was the leading mobile smartphone operating system in the U.S. in December 2009 with 41.6 percent share of U.S. smartphone devices. Apple ranked second with 25.3 percent share (up 1.2 percentage points), followed by Microsoft with 18.0 percent share, Palm with 6.1 percent share, and Google with 5.2 percent share (up 2.7 percentage points).

Top Smartphone Platforms 3 Months Ending Dec. 2009 vs. 3 Months Ending Sep. 2009 Total U.S. Age 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens
	Share (%) of Smartphone Devices
	Sep-09	Dec-09	Point Change
Total Smartphone Subscribers	100.0%	100.0%	N/A
RIM	42.6%	41.6%	-1.0
Apple	24.1%	25.3%	1.2
Microsoft	19.0%	18.0%	-1.0
Palm	8.3%	6.1%	-2.2
Google	2.5%	5.2%	2.7

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Sociolatte