Android Owns Half US Smartphone Market

Half the smartphones in the U.S. ran on Google’s Android platform through April, according to the latest mobile market data from comScore. Android’s 50.8% market is essentially unchanged from March, but up slightly from 48.6% at the start of the year.

About half of users are both downloading apps and using mobile browsers, up from less than 40% in the year-earlier period. More than a third (36%) are going to social networking sites or blogs, a third play games, and almost 26% listen to music on their devices. Apple’s iOS claimed almost a third (31.4%) of the market as of April, trailed by Research in Motion’s BlackBerry (11.6%), Microsoft’s Windows Mobile/Windows Phone (4%) and Symbian (1.3%). RIM’s share is down from 12.3% in March and 15.2% in January, underscoring its losing battle to maintain its customer base against Google and Apple. Microsoft and Symbian also continue to see shrinking smartphone market share.