Apple, Google Chip Away at BlackBerry's Market Lead

Ars Technica reports: U.S. mobile users are increasingly getting into text messaging, Internet browsing, and social networks as they continue to shift to more capable devices. Additionally, Apple's and Google's share of the smartphone market is inching up while other leaders—namely RIM—are slowly being chipped away, at least according to the latest data from comScore.

Nearly two thirds (63 percent) of U.S. mobile subscribers sent a text as of December 2009—a number that is up 2.1 percentage points since just September. Similarly, those who accessed social-networking sites or blogs went up 2.1 percentage points during that time period, and those who used a browser on their phones went up by 1.5 percentage points to 27.5 percent.

Although some aspects of mobile content consumption (namely listening to music and playing games) stayed relatively flat, all categories saw some increase during the three-month period, indicating that users are both acquiring phones with more capabilities and are opening up more to the idea of using phones for things other than voice calls.

The majority of mobile users are still using standard handsets, but when it comes to smartphones, RIM remained the leader with 42 percent of the smartphone segment in December 2009. This number was down a full percentage point from September, however, while Apple's share (25 percent in December) was up by 1.2 percentage points—a trend that RIM has been battling with Apple for some time now.

Equally fearsome is Google's comparatively huge 2.7 percentage-point jump (to 5.2 percent), while both Microsoft and Palm also lost points over the same time period. Although RIM still has a long way to go before giving up the lead to Apple, and Google still has plenty of share to gain before it overtakes Microsoft's No. 3 spot, the trends show that consumers are warming more to the iPhone and Android phones than those traditionally marketed towards enterprise users. (Palm, in the fourth spot at 6.1 percent, looks like it will be surpassed by Google within months if the two companies continue on their current trajectories.)

As with most metrics reports, the numbers from comScore don't necessarily match up with numbers from other firms, but the trends are similar. Mobile metrics firm AdMob recently noted that iPhone OS and Android were both making steady gains in the mobile ad market as of November 2009, while others (such as RIM, Palm's webOS, and Windows Mobile) were sliding.