Android OS leads the pack in U.S. smartphone market

The Internet marketing research company comScore announced the surprising results of a new study this week that showed one-third of U.S. mobile smartphone subscribers use Google’s Android operating system on their mobile devices. This constituted a 7 percent increase from November of last year and makes Android the market leader for mobile operating systems.

Android OS now has a solid 4 percent cushion ahead of the second most popular operating system RIM. The maker of the popular Blackberry fell 4.6 percent from last year’s No. 1 spot in just three months.

While Apple’s iOS market share for mobile operating systems increased slightly, it has not matched Android’s explosive growth and remain in the third place spot. Yet, Apple did see a nearly 1 percent increase in mobile phone hardware market share, no doubt bolstered by the release of the Verizon iPhone earlier this year.

While the Verizon iPhone was the most purchased phone in February, the verdict is still out on whether tech journalists were correct in their preliminary praise for it. A new survey from ChangeWave Research shows that while Verizon iPhone users experienced less dropped calls than AT&T users (1.8 percent vs. 4.8 percent), their level of satisfaction is about the same.

Despite the bad news indicated by comScore’s survey results for Windows-based phones, a 1.3 percent loss of market share, many industry leaders are confident in future growth.

In February, Microsoft announced its future partnership with Nokia that would replace Nokia’s Symbian OS, once the most popular operating system in the world, with Windows Phone OS on all Nokia devices.

“The new alliance brings together Nokia’s hardware capabilities and Windows Phone’s differentiated platform,” Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst at tech firm IDC, said to PCWorld.com. “By 2015, IDC expects Windows Phone to be No. 2 operating system worldwide behind Android.”

ComScore’s survey results also show a 3.2 percent increase in U.S. mobile phone subscribers who have used downloaded apps. But this may be an area where Apple takes points from the now-dominant Android OS.

New survey results released this week from Robert W. Baird & Co. show that many app developers are unhappy with certain aspects of Android development.

While 71 percent of those surveyed developed apps for Android OS, a majority of the developers were concerned about certain technical problems Google’s mobile OS is currently facing, as well as the “level of ‘junk'” apps in the Android Market, according to PCMag.com.

Apple still remains the top source of revenue generation for third-party smartphone application developers, according to the Baird & Co. survey results.