Android sales up 1580% year on year

Google's Android has the largest share of the US smartphone market, according to a new survey from ComScore.

Android has 31.2 per cent of the market as of January 2011, up from 23.5 per cent in October 2010.

This means it has displaced RIM and its Blackberry handsets as king of the hill. RIM dropped from a 35.8 to 30.4 per cent share.

Apple held relatively steady, remaining in third place with a 0.1 per cent gain to 24.7 per cent, while Microsoft saw its share decline from 9.7 to 8.0 per cent. Palm rounded out the top five at 3.2 per cent.

Claimed ComScore's MobiLens division, "65.8 million people in the US owned smartphones during the three months ending in January 2011, up 8 per cent from the preceding three-month period."

ComScore's estimates held that 234 million Americans ages 13 and older used mobile devices, with 23.7 per cent playing games on their handsets.

In addition, stats from IDC European Mobile Phone Tracker (seen by Mobile Magazine) claim that Android's European sales grew from 470,000 units in the last quarter of 2009 to 7.9 million for the same period in 2010. This constitutes a 1580 per cent boost.

By comparison, iOS-baed phones grew 66 per cent. Commented Francisco Jeronimo, European mobile devices research manager at IDC: "The last quarter of 2010 clearly shows the trends for the coming years in Western Europe. The Western European mobile phone market will be dominated by smartphones and Android will be king of the hill."

IDC also estimated that that Android's install base will grow by around 37 per cent per year between 2010 and 2015 in Europe.