Majority of U.S. smartphones now on Android platform

Apple in distant second; Samsung is the most popular phone manufacturer

Google’s Android has a lot to be happy about when it comes to recent figures that show its dominance in the U.S.

Google averaged more than 50% of the U.S. smartphone market during the first three months of this year, according to a comScore report released Tuesday.

The report surveyed 30,000 mobile subscribers in the U.S., aged 13 and above.

The study found that Samsung is the most popular cell phone manufacturer with 26.0 percent of the market share, up from 25.3% from the three-month average ending in December 2011. The only other manufacturer to gain a share of the market was Apple, who rose to 14% from 12.4%.

LG, Motorola and HG each saw a loss from the previous three-month average of less than 1%.

When it comes to which platform smartphone users are choosing, it is overwhelmingly Google’s Android platform. More than 106 million people in the United States owned smartphones during the three months ending in March, up 9 percent from December. 

Android now controls a majority, 51 percent, of the total U.S. smartphone market. Google increased its marketshares by 3.7% since the December 2011.

Second to Android was Apple, which has 30.7% of the market, an increase of 1.1% while Microsoft lost a small percentage of its share, 0.8%. But the biggest loser was RIM, which had its market share decrease by 3.7%. These loses recently prompted many of the  the BlackBerry designer's executives to resign and for the company to declare that it would be focusing on foreign markets and the business community.

The Android has recently seen a boost in sales thanks to the Amazon Kindle Fire, which sold more than four million units in December 2011 alone. It now has over 50% of the Android market in the U.S.

On top of that, Android might get another boost this summer with the expected release of the Google tablet.

The comScore study also surveyed users on what activies they do with their smart phone.

In March, 74.3 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device, the most popular activity by far. 50% used downloaded apps and 36.1% accessed a social networking site on their phone.

The least popular activity was listening to music on their phone, with just above a quarter of the respondents saying they had done this.

The number of people who text messaged stayed the same, but every other smartphone activity saw a percentage increase in the number of subscribers.

(Image source: abheysharma.wordpress.com)