Science

Apple gains, RIM loses handset market share

Apple makes gains in handset and platform market share, while Research In Motion loses ground on both fronts, according to market researcher ComScore.

Brooke Crothers Former CNET contributor

Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.

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Brooke Crothers

July 5, 2011 6:50 p.m. PT

Apple gained and Research In Motion continued to lose market share in handsets while Google's Android software took more share, according to market researcher ComScore.

Apple gained 1.2 points (see chart below) to garner an 8.7 percent of the handset market and pushing RIM out of the No. 4 slot, according to a comScore survey for the three months ending in May. Samsung's market-leading share was virtually unchanged at 24.8 percent. The results of the survey were released today.

On the smartphone operating environment "platform" front, Google's Android share jumped to 38.1 percent from 33 percent in the previous period (see second chart below). Apple's share rose to 26.6 percent from 25.2 percent in the previous period.

RIM, Microsoft, and Palm all lost platform share. RIM was bumped out of the No.2 spot by Apple, as the former's share fell to 24.7 percent from 28.9 percent in the previous period, a loss of 4.2 percentage points.

A total of 76.8 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three-month period, up 11 percent from the preceding three months, ComScore said.