Android, iOS Gain While RIM Slides in the U.S.

Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS gained a larger percentage of the U.S. smartphone market in the latter part of the year, while Research in Motion’s share declined along with Microsoft and Symbian, according to the latest figures from market researcher comScore.

Android’s market share rose from 43.8 percent at the end of August to 46.9 percent at the end of last month, comScore said. A total of 91.4 million people in the U.S. own a smartphone, and comScore surveyed more than 30,000 users to derive its figures.

Apple held 28.7 percent of the market, up from 27.3 percent. RIM slid from a 19.7 percent share to 16.6, the biggest decline of five platforms ranked by comScore. Microsoft declined .5 percent to 5.2 percent, and Symbian fell from 1.8 percent to 1.5 percent.

Google’s open-source Android operating system is used by a variety of major manufacturers, including Samsung, LG, Motorola and HTC. Andy Rubin, Google’s senior vice president of mobile, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday that 3.7 million Android devices were activated on Saturday and Sunday alone.

As far as manufacturers for both smartphones and non-smartphones, Samsung held 25.6 percent of the market and LG at 20.5 percent. Motorola came in third at 13.7 percent, followed by Apple at 11.2 percent and RIM 6.5 percent.

For RIM, the figures mark what has been a difficult year for the company, which experienced a major service outage in October and a tough launch of its PlayBook tablet.

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