Digital measurement provider comScore today released its latest data from its “MobiLens” service which reports key trends in the U.S. mobile phone industry during the three month average period ending January 2011.
This particular study surveyed more than 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers and found Samsung to be the top handset manufacturer overall with 24.9 percent market share. Coinciding with similar reports, Android took the lead among smartphone platforms with 31.2 percent market share, after only two short months in second place. Not surprisingly, SMS remained the top mobile content in terms of overall usage for the three-month period with a 68.1 percent share.
Mobile browsers were used by 37 percent of subscribers, while those who used downloaded applications comprised 35.3 percent of the mobile audience — representing an increase of 1.6 percentage points. Accessing social networking sites or blogs increased 1.1 percentage points, representing 25.3 percent of mobile subscribers, while playing games represented 23.7 percent of the mobile audience. Interestingly, listening to music represented a solid 16.5 percent (up 1.1 percentage points over the previous period).
In terms of the mobile OS race, 65.8 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in January 2011, up 8 percent from the preceding three-month period. RIM ranked second behind Android, according to the study, with 30.4 percent market share, followed by Apple with 24.7 percent. Microsoft (8.0 percent) and Palm (3.2 percent) rounded out the top five.
