Android closes on iPhone in smartphone stakes

Apple and Google are the only major companies to report growth in the US smartphone market in the last quarter, according to the latest Comscore figures.

The figures for the quarter ending on 31 October — the first full quarter since the iPhone 4 hit the market — show that the other big players in the field, Research in Motion (RIM), Microsoft and Palm, all lost market share.

Google's Android platform has seen growth of 6.5 percent in the most recent quarter. Photo credit: Comscore/ZDNet.com

During the quarter, Google saw its smartphone market share grow by 6.5 percent, compared with Apple's growth of 0.8 percent. That has left the two pretty much neck-and-neck in the race to overtake RIM. Google's 23.5 percent share is a mere 1.1 percent behind Apple's 24.6 percent. RIM's share fell from 39.3 percent to 35.8 percent over the quarter.

For more on this ZDNet UK-selected story, see Android grows faster than iPhone, RIM slips as smartphone wars continue on ZDNet.com.