Google Android overtakes BlackBerry in operating system market share

Research In Motion (RIM)’s smartphone mobile OS market share in the US has received yet another blow – as Google has puffed and hacked its way past. As for Apple, they are inching nearer and nearer to land at the third position. comScore’s latest data showed that the Android OS smartphone share jumped 6% during the first quarter of 2011 to hit 34.7%, while RIM saw a 4.5% drop to arrive at 27.1%. Apple trails closely behind which was a 0.5% increase from December last year.

The other two names in the top five were Microsoft and Palm, where the former has 7.5% of the market share while the latter is least impressive at just 2.8% – both of them suffering a 0.9% drop.

It must be said that the Verizon iPhone’s launch (that’s a CDMA version of the iPhone 4 for those of you who are not in the know) has certainly helped Cupertino boost their figures and make more gains, but what most analysts would be most worried about point towards RIM and their beleaguered BlackBerry OS – something that once held so much promise, but it seems to be crumbling slowly but surely at the moment. What do you think RIM must do to stem the tide – does the problem lies in hardware, software or both?

Edwin Kee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Android, blackberry os, Google, iOS