14 DAY TRIAL // Smartphones have been reported to gain more and more market share in the mobile phone segment during the past years, and they are also expected to gain even more traction from users in the future, even if the market is greatly influenced by the financial recession. And while we already reported that the first place in the best-selling smartphone top in the US was occupied by the BlackBerry Curve 8300 series, we should also take a look at the performance of different operating systems in the country.
A recent report from ComScore, which is based on a February survey conducted by the company, ranks the top five smartphone operating systems in the U.S. according to the market share each of them accounts for. One thing that should be mentioned is that the survey represents phone ownership at that specific point in time, as it is based on the answers provided by 39,428 U.S. mobile subscribers over the age of 13, and does not show the exact number of mobile phones that have been sold with a certain operating system.
On the leading position in the top we'll find RIM’s BlackBerry operating system again, which has around 9,668,977 current U.S. users, shows ComScore's report. Following on the second place is Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform, with a number of 6,807,554 current U.S. users, according to the same survey, while the third place goes to Apple’s iPhone OS, with a number of 5,258,504 current U.S. users.
The rankings made by comScore also show that Palm OS is placed on the fourth position in the mobile operating system top, which accounts for a number of 2,398,755 current U.S. users, while the Symbian OS is placed fifth with 888,532 current U.S. users that opted for it. The last in the ranking is the Google Android platform, with 427,914 current U.S. users, according to comScore. Once again, these numbers are based on a February survey, so they have changed since then for sure.
The following few quarters should be quite interesting for the smartphone market, considering what phone makers and software developers already announced to be planning. For starters, we'll see a new platform coming from Palm to the market, the webOS, which should attract a lot of users, especially since it is featured on the high-end Palm Pre phone. In addition, some major updates to OSes like Windows Mobile and iPhone OS are also expected to surface, not to mention the fact that the Android platform will come to more devices this year, and probably the next ones as well.