Google Android surged past RIM BlackBerry to become the most popular smartphone platform in the US, accounting for 31.2% of market share as of January 2011, up 7.7 percentage points from the previous three-month period, according to data from the comScore MobiLens service.

Ranked second, RIM accounted for 30.4% of market share as of January, down 5.4 percentage points (PPs) from the previous three-month period, followed by Apple with 24.7%. Microsoft and Palm both lost ground as of January, accounting for 8.0% and 3.2%, respectively.

Some 65.8 million people in the US owned smartphones as of January, up 8% from the previous three-month period.

OEM Market Share

Device manufacturer Samsung was the top OEM with 24.9% of US mobile subscribers as of January, up 0.7 PPs from the three-month period ended October. LG ranked second with 20.8% share, followed by Motorola (16.5%), RIM (8.6%) and Apple (7.0%).

Roughly 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices during as of January.

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Mobile Content Usage

More people are using mobile apps: US subscribers who used downloaded applications comprised 35.3% of the mobile audience as of January, up 1.6 PPs from the previous three-month period, while 25.3% of mobile subscribers accessed social networking sites or blogs, up 1.1 PPs.

Some 68.1% of mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device as of January, while browsers were used by 37.0% of subscribers, up 0.8 PPs from the previous month three-month period.