Smartphone Market: iPhone Now Beating BlackBerry

By James Lee Phillips

June 6, 2011 1:56 PM EDT

In the United States smartphone market, the medals have been shuffled: the iPhone is now silver, the BlackBerry booted to bronze, and the Android stays golden.

The leading reports on the smartphone market in the United States show Apple's popular iPhone moving to second place for the first time, unseating BlackBerry as Research In Motion's once-leading mobile platform continues it's decline. Google's Android phones are still well in the lead, but there is less than 11% share total between the three leaders.

Friday's ComScore report has Android users making up 36.4% (up 5.2% for the first quarter), Apple at 26%, and RIM with 25.7% -- not a giant split, but a significant one. BlackBerry smartphones had held the top spot in the US market virtually throughout the rise of smartphone use; this ended at the beginning of the year, when they were surpassed by Android.

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This confirms the findings of The Nielsen Company's report released on Tuesday, which showed Android with 36%, Apple with 26%, and BlackBerry faring slightly worse at 23%. While Nielsen made no mention of the overall number people in the US who use a smartphone (ComScore reported 74.6 million), Nielsen did say that 37% of all MOBILE consumers owned one.

RIM recently announced that its much-anticipated PlayBook tablet will run Android apps, and the company also made a deal with Microsoft to incorporate Bing into all upcoming BlackBerry search and OS functions. Meanwhile, Android is the OS of choice for many of the next generation of tablets shown at this week's Computex conference in Taiwan, and Apple plans to blitz the market with a new iOS version for mobiles and an iCloud announcement at next week's WorldWide Developer's Conference.

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No word yet whether U.S. President Barack Obama, perhaps the highest-profile BlackBerry user in the world, has decided to switch; he's been seen with it as recently as mid-May...but recent photos have also captured the President with an iPad under his arm.

James Lee Phillips is a Senior Writer & Research Analyst for IBG.com. With offices in Dallas, Las Vegas, and New York, & London, IBG is quickly becoming the leading expert in Internet Marketing, Local Search, SEO, Website Development and Reputation Management. More information can be found at www.ibg.com.

This article is contributed by IBG.com and does not represent the views or opinions of International Business Times.