RESTON, Va. — Apple’s iOS has grabbed second place as the most popular smartphone platform in the U.S. leaping past RIM.
According to market research firm comScore, Apple’s market share was up 1.4 percent to 26.6 percent during the three-month period ending in May.
RIM’s Blackberry OS dropped 4.2 percent. All other players except Android also lost ground including Microsoft and Palm that each shed 1.9 and 0.4 percent respectively.
Android held onto its number one spot growing 5.1 percentage points to 38.1 percent during the quarter.
The report said that Android gained more ground than iOS in the smartphone market that grew 11 percent during the last quarter, but Apple led in smartphone hardware growth. LG also posted slight growth in the hardware sector at 0.2 percent while both Motorola and RIM declined slightly.
According to Gigaom, the report was encouraging for Apple reflecting positive growth despite Android’s juggernaut.
“Other recent studies and reports indicate that Apple may be beginning to claw back some of the ground given up to Android, too. But with iOS 5 and the wide release of Google+ on the way soon to shake things up, the smartphone game is becoming a very tricky one to call,” Gigaom reported.