The continued popularity of the iPhone and Android-based devices helped Apple and Google maintain their lead over RIM in the first three months of the year, with Android smartphones snapping up 36.4 percent of the U.S. market.
Of the 74.6 million people in the U.S. with smartphones, 26 percent had iPhones, up about 1.3 percent during the last three months of 2010, according to data from comScore. Android's tally, meanwhile, was a 5.2 percent jump from last year.
RIM did not fare as well, losing about 4.7 percent market share to land at 25.7 percent. Microsoft also saw a decline, dropping 1.3 percent to 6.7 percent, while Palm rounded out the top five with a slight dip to 2.6 percent.
Overall, the number of people with smartphones was up 13 percent.
On the handset front, Samsung was the top U.S. manufacturer with 24.5 percent, though that was a slight 0.4 percent drop from last year. LG came in at number two with 20.9 percent, a 0.1 percent increase, while Motorola was at number three with 15.6 percent, a 0.9 percent drop. Apple and RIM rounded out the top five, with Cupertino nabbing 8.3 percent of the market, a 1.3 percent jump; RIM dropped 0.4 percent.
What are people doing with these phones? According to comScore, one of the most popular activities is text messaging. About 68.8 percent of people use their mobile phones to text, up 0.7 percent. The activity that saw the biggest increase, however, was accessing social-networking sites or blogs; about 28 percent of mobile users did so, a 2.7 percent increase. Another popular activity was using downloaded apps, which jumped 2.4 percent to 37.8 percent.
ComScore surveyed more than 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers for its report.