Apple iOS gains on Google Android in mobile OS race

Summary: Android's still number one, but with the arrival of Apple's new iPhone5c and iPhone5s, Apple's iOS narrowed the distance.

ComScore's latest quarterly results in the U.S. mobile phone wars are out for the summer months. While Google's Android operating system still leads the pack, with 51.6 percent platform market share, Apple moved up to 40.7 percent, even before the sensational September sales of its iPhone5c and iPhone5s.

IOS's gains came at the expense of Android, which lost 0.8 percent and the beleaguered Blackberry, which also lost 0.8 percent, Blackberry now holds a mere 4 percent of the market. Microsoft, with Windows Phone 8, crept up by 0.2 percent to a 3.2 percent share.

As for smartphone brands, Apple remains on top with 40.7 percent of the US OEM market. Samsung stays in second place with 24.3 percent. The other major smartphone vendors, HTC, Motorola, and LG, either lost market share or stayed level, well behind the two leading smartphone vendors.

With the number of smartphone owners in the US now topping 145 million, users increasingly rely on their mobile devices for their Internet access. This brings the total smartphone market penetration to 60.8 percent in August, up 3 percent since May.

Once on the Internet with their smartphones, 92.2 percent of users visit Google sites, followed by Facebook, at 84.6 percent; somewhat surprisingly, 83.2 percent visit Yahoo sites; and 68.6 percent go to Amazon sites. This mirrors Internet use in the US, where Google, followed by Facebook, are the top two contenders.

When it comes to Internet-based apps, the story is slightly different. By comScore's count, Facebook ranked as the top smartphone app, with 75.7 percent of the app audience, followed by five Google-owned apps: Google Search, 53.9 percent; Google Play, 53.2 percent; YouTube, 52.8 percent; Google Maps, 46.1 percent; and Gmail, 44.3 percent.

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