October 2010 US mobile subscriber market share

RESTON, USA: comScore Inc. has released data from the comScore MobiLens service, reporting key trends in the US mobile phone industry during the three month average period ending October 2010.

The report ranked the leading mobile original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and smartphone operating system (OS) platforms in the US according to their share of current mobile subscribers ages 13 and older, and reviewed the most popular activities and content accessed via the subscriber's primary mobile phone.

The October report found Samsung to be the top handset manufacturer overall with 24.2 percent market share, while RIM led among smmartphone platforms with 35.8 percent market share.

OEM Market share
For the three month average period ending in October, 234 million Americans ages 13 and older used mobile devices.

Device manufacturer Samsung ranked as the top OEM with 24.2 percent of US mobile subscribers, up 1.1 percentage points from the three month period ending in July.

LG ranked second with 21.0 percent share, followed by Motorola (17.7 percent share), RIM (9.3 percent share, up 0.3 percentage points) and Nokia (7.1 percent share).Source: comScore Inc.

Smartphone platform market share
60.7 million people in the US owned smartphones during the three months ending in October, up 14 percent from the preceding three month period, representing 1 out of every 4 mobile subscribers.

RIM was the leading mobile smartphone platform in the US with 35.8 percent share of US smartphone subscribers, followed by Apple with 24.6 percent share (up 0.8 percentage points).

Google Android saw another month of strong growth, rising 6.5 percentage points to capture 23.5 percent of smartphone subscribers. Microsoft accounted for 9.7 percent of smartphone subscribers, while Palm rounded out the top five with 3.9 percent. Despite losing share to Android, most smartphone platforms continue to gain subscribers as the smartphone market overall continues to grow.Source: comScore Inc.

Mobile content usage
In October, 68.1 percent of US mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device, up 2.1 percentage points versus the prior three month period, while browsers were used by 36.2 percent of US mobile subscribers (up 2.6 percentage points).

Subscribers who used downloaded applications comprised 33.7 percent of the mobile audience, representing an increase of 2.3 percentage points.

Accessing of social networking sites or blogs increased 2.4 percentage points, representing 24.2 percent of mobile subscribers. Playing games represented 23.7 percent of the mobile audience (up 1.4 percentage points), while listening to music increased 0.9 percentage points, representing 15.4 percent of subscribers.Source: comScore Inc.