comScore: Android gains as iPhone stagnates

Digital metrics company comScore’s (NASDAQ: SCOR) latest MobiLensnumbers are in and show a marked increase in smartphone use with Motorola (NYSE:MOT) capturing the lead in handset manufacturers, and Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Bing and Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android operating system (OS), showing small but significant market growth in their respective markets, mobile search and OSs.

ComScore’s fourth-quarter survey of more than 30,000 consumers indicates that American mobile subscribers age 13 and older were using Motorola-made phones more than any other. Motorola captured 22.9% market share, followed closely by LG at 21.7%, Samsung at 21.1%, global market leader Nokia at 9.1% and Research in Motion (RIM) at 7.8%. The BlackBerry maker did, however, take the lead in smartphones with 43% of the overall smartphone market, which included 42.7 million Americans, an 18% increase from the previous quarter.

RIM had a small growth spurt of 1.7% from the previous quarter, but enough to maintain its sizable lead over Apple, which came in flat at 25.1%. Android increased 4.3% to capture 7.1% of the market, by its presence across all four carriers.

The large increase makes the growth significant for the open-source OS, but it also puts it in second to last place, in front of only Palm, which captured 5.7% of the market. Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS took only 15.7% of the market as the industry continues to wait for its Windows Phone Series 7 debut later this year.

But, Microsoft did have better luck in search. It’s still small mobile presence with its Bing search engine appears to be growing in comScore’s monthly mobile search report. In the growing battle of mobile search, punctuated by operator partnership switch-ups, Microsoft’s Bing is now the source of 11.5% of all US searches, up slightly from 11.3% in January. It wasn’t enough, however, to reach Yahoo’s waning 16.8% market share, slightly down from the previous quarter. Google remains the market leader by far with 66.5% of the US search market as of February, up from 65.4% the previous month.

Other notable findings from comScore’s report:

- In Q4, 63.5% of US mobile subscribers used text messaging, up 1.5% versus the prior quarter.
- Of the respondents, 28.6% used mobile browsers, up 1.8% from the previous quarter.
- Mobile gamers included 21.7% of US mobile subscribers, a slight quarterly increase.
- Use of social networking sites or blogs grew 3.3% to 17.1% of mobile subscribers last quarter.
- About 12.8% of phone users listened to cell phone-stored music, up 1.2% sequentially.
- Nearly 20% of mobile subscribers used a downloaded application, up 1.5% from Q3.