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Android continues to gobble up more smartphone customers, according to the new stats from market researcher ComScore.

Looking at the three months ending August, Android's market share rose to 19.6 percent in the U.S.--a gain of 6.6 points from the prior three months. Though Google's smartphone platform is still third among the top five, it was the only one to show growth in market share for the period.

Among the other major players, RIM was the leading smartphone platform with 37.6 percent of U.S. subscribers. Apple was next in line with 24.… Read more

If you thought location-aware search and other mobile mapping technologies were cool, hold onto your hat. A new wave of innovation in the mobile market will bring augmented reality to smartphones, allowing users to interact virtually with their surroundings.

Augmented reality, or AR, is a term that refers to technology that superimposes computer-generated content over live images viewed through cameras. The technology, which has been used in gaming and in military applications on computers, has been around for years. But thanks to more sophisticated devices, faster wireless broadband networks, and new developments at the chip level by companies like Qualcomm, it has become inexpensive enough to put into smartphones and tablets.

Even though these are still the early days for the technology--chip vendors like Qualcomm are just now giving demonstrations--augmented reality could have a major impact on smartphones in the coming years.

"The idea that a mobile device knows where I am and can access, manipulate, and overlay that information on real images that are right in front of me really gets my science fiction juices flowing," said Mark Donovan, senior analyst at ComScore. "It's just beginning now, and it will likely be one of the most interesting trends in mobile in the next few years."

Just as location-based services have begun to change how wireless subscribers use their cell phones and marketers reach an increasingly mobile audience, augmented reality will go a step further, bringing a wealth of collected data to users' fingertips.

Today, GPS and other location-based technologies allow people to track and find friends on the go. It allows them to "check in" at particular locations. In other words, wireless subscribers provide information about their surroundings, such as where they are, and that information is stored and shared with others via the Internet cloud. That information can be used so friends can locate you, or it can be used by marketers to send you coupons and other promotions.… Read more

Google's dominance of the U.S. search engine landscape remains uncontested, though the leader has been shedding a smidgen of market share lately, according to ComScore.

For the month of August, Google's share dipped slightly to 65.4 percent from 65.8 percent in July, reported ComScore yesterday. The latest figure continued the company's downward trend from 66.2 percent in June.

Moving into more positive territory, Yahoo's share inched up 0.3 percentage points to 17.4, while Microsoft eked out a 0.1 percentage point gain to grab 11.1 percent of the market.… Read more

Android continues to grab greater chunks of the U.S. smartphone market while its competitors watch their share shrink or stagnate.

Though still No. 3, Google's Android platform saw its market share climb 5 percentage points to win 17 percent of all U.S. smartphone subscribers for the three months ending in July compared with the prior three months, market researcher ComScore reported yesterday.

This contrasts with No. 1 Research In Motion, which saw its share drop 1.8 points to 39.3 percent. No. 2 Apple also witnessed a drop in share, losing 1.3 points to take … Read more

Internet users are spending a bit more time these days socializing on Facebook than searching on Google, according to new data from market researcher ComScore.

In August, people spent 41.1 million minutes on Facebook, accounting for 9.9 percent of the total number of minutes they spent online for the month. That inched past the 39.8 million minutes, or 9.6 percent of total time, that Net users spent on all of Google's sites combined, including its search engine, YouTube, Gmail, and Google News, ComScore said Thursday.

For the month, Yahoo proved the third most popular online … Read more

New ComScore figures show that Facebook now has a traffic advantage over social network Orkut in India, one of the Google-owned site's long-lasting strongholds and a major target for Facebook.

Use of social networks in India grew 43 percent from July 2009 to July 2010, the numbers show. More than 33 million people in India (15 and older) are now using social-networking sites. That's 84 percent of all Internet users in that country. Traffic firm ComScore found that with 20.9 million users in India, Facebook now has a slight edge over Orkut, which has 19.9 million … Read more

People are increasingly relying on their mobile phones to deliver maps and directions on the go, according to ComScore.

Data released by ComScore on Friday discovered that 14 percent of all mobile phones users in the U.S., or 33.5 million people, accessed maps on their devices at least once a month over the three months ended April, a 44 percent rise from the same period in 2009.

The number of mobile users who retrieved maps one to three times a month rose 47 percent to 17.1 million, while those accessing maps once a week climbed 60 percent … Read more

People with Web-browsing phones are spending a lot more of their minutes accessing social networks these days, according to a new study from ComScore.

The study, released Wednesday, pegs social networking as the fastest growing activity among people with smartphones and other advanced phones that offer Web browsing, which are also known as feature phones.

Among the 69.6 million phone users who tapped mobile apps over the three-month period ending in April, 14.5 million of them accessed social networks--a 240 percent jump from the same period in 2009.

Among the nearly 73 million who used mobile browsers, 30 … Read more

Motorola and Samsung both took home leading market shares of 21.9 percent among U.S. mobile subscribers for the first quarter of 2010, according to data released Thursday by ComScore, though Samsung won the tip-top spot by a fraction of a percent.

Ranking the top mobile handset makers among U.S. cellular subscribers age 13 and older, ComScore also found LG following closely in third place with a 21.8 percent slice of the market. Research In Motion and Nokia filled out the top five, both with shares of 8.3 percent. Among the five players, Samsung and RIM … Read more