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121.3 Million Americans Now Own a Smartphone

comScore reported the key trends within the U.S. mobile phone industry during the three month average period ending October 2012. Their latest market study surveyed more than 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers and found Samsung to be the top handset manufacturer overall with 26.3 percent market share.

Once again, Google Android continues to lead among smartphone OS platforms, accounting for 53.6 percent of smartphone subscribers, while Apple was able to secure just 34.3 percent.

The Android ecosystem has gained significant traction within the media tablet market as well, which likely also helps to drive further adoption -- attracting a huge pool of independent software app developers.

For the three-month average period ending in October, device manufacturer Samsung ranked as the top OEM with 26.3 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers (up 0.7 percentage points).

Apple ranked second for the first time on record with 17.8 percent market share (up 1.5 percentage points), followed by LG with 17.6 percent share, Motorola with 11 percent and HTC with 6 percent.

121.3 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones -- that's a 51.9 percent mobile market penetration -- during the three months ending in October, which is up by 6 percent since July 2012.

Google Android ranked as the top smartphone platform with 53.6 percent market share (that's up by 1.4 percentage points), while Apple’s share increased by 0.9 percentage points to 34.3 percent.

RIM ranked a distant third with 7.8 percent share, followed by Microsoft (3.2 percent) and Symbian (0.6 percent).

In October, 75.9 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device (that's up by 0.3 percentage points). Downloaded applications were used by 54.5 percent of subscribers (up 1.9 percentage points), while browsers were used by 52.7 percent (up 1.5 percentage points).

Accessing of social networking sites or blogs increased 1.5 percentage points to 39.4 percent of mobile subscribers. Game-playing was done by 34.1 percent of the mobile audience (up 0.3 percentage points), while 28.7 percent listened to music on their phones (up 0.4 percentage points).

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