Mar 4, 2011 19:38 GMT  ·  By

Google's Android operating system has finally managed to win the battle against Apple's iOS and RIM's BlackBerry platforms on the United States smartphone market, recent data from The Nielsen Company shows. With 29 percent market share on the US smartphone OS area, Android is the king of the hill at the moment, being two percent points ahead of both BlackBerry and iOS, which are enjoying 27 percent of the market each.

In all fairness, this was somehow expected, since Android has been growing significantly the past two years, and more and more devices running under it are currently being pushed to the market.

However, even if Android won the battle, its victory is significant only when it comes to the operating systems war, but is not as significant in the hardware area.

To be more precise, RIM and Apple are still in the lead as device manufacturers, and the fact that they produce both the hardware and the software for their handsets offers them a better position on the market.

“When it comes to consumer marketshare by operating system, Android (29%) appears to be pulling ahead of RIM Blackberry (27%) and Apple iOS (27%),” Nielsen notes in a recent post on their blog.

“But an analysis by manufacturer shows RIM and Apple to be the winners compared to other device makers since they are the only ones creating and selling smartphones with their respective operating systems.”

The company also notes that HTC comes in third on the device market share chart, with 12 percent of smartphone consumers in the US owning an Android-powered handset from the company, and 7 percent of them having a HTC device based on a Microsoft OS.

Motorola's Android phones are in the hands of 10 percent of consumer smartphone owners, the company notes, adding that one percent owned a Motorola device based on a Microsoft OS.

“Finally, of the three most popular smartphone operating systems, Android seems to attract more young consumers,” the company explains, as comment to the second chart attached to this article.

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Android takes top spot on the US smartphone OS market
Android takes top spot on the US smartphone OS market
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