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76.8 Million People in the U.S. Now Own Smartphones

As more Americans each month abandon landline phone service, mobile phone service growth becomes increasingly important to the legacy telecom service providers, such as AT&T and Verizon. However, Google and Apple continue to drive the upside opportunity in this market transition -- based upon the adoption of new smartphone applications.

comScore released data about the key trends in the U.S. mobile phone industry during the three month average period ending May 2011.

Their latest market study surveyed more than 30,000 U.S. mobile phone service subscribers and found Samsung to be the top handset manufacturer overall with 24.8 percent market share. Google Android led among smartphone platforms with 38.1 percent market share.

For the three month average period, 234 million Americans ages 13 and older used mobile devices.

Device manufacturer Samsung ranked as the top OEM with 24.8 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers, followed by LG with 21.1 percent share and Motorola with 15.1 percent share. Apple strengthened its position at #4 with 8.7 percent share of mobile subscribers (up 1.2 percentage points), while RIM rounded out the top five with 8.1 percent share.

76.8 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in May 2011, up 11 percent from the preceding three month period.

Google Android ranked as the top operating system with 38.1 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers, up 5.1 percentage points. Apple strengthened its #2 position with 26.6 percent of the smartphone market, up 1.4 percentage points. RIM ranked third with 24.7 percent share, followed by Microsoft (5.8 percent) and Palm (2.4 percent).

In May, 69.5 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device. Browsers were used by 39.8 percent of subscribers (up 1.5 percentage points), while downloaded applications were used by 38.6 percent (up 2.0 percentage points).

Accessing of social networking sites or blogs increased 1.8 percentage points to 28.6 percent of mobile subscribers. Game-playing was done by 26.9 percent of the mobile audience (up 2.3 percentage points), while 18.6 percent listened to music on their phones.

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