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Smartphones continue to take over the U.S. mobile phone market, and Google's Android software has the most momentum in that category at the moment.

Data released by ComScore Monday shows that Android-based phones are still a fraction--9 percent--of the U.S. smartphone market, but posted the fastest growth of any smartphone platform over the last three months. Google and its partners gained 5.2 percentage points of market share from November 2009 to February 2010, presumably on the back of the successful Motorola Droid launch.

However, that's only good enough for fourth place in the U.S. … Read more

Microsoft's Bing grabbed 11.5 percent of all search queries in the U.S. in February, slightly higher than its 11.3 percent share the prior month, according to the latest figures from ComScore.

Yahoo, which recently won regulatory approval over a search technology and advertising deal with Microsoft, captured 16.8 percent of all queries, a slight decline of 0.2 percent from January. But Google remains the search engine champ, winning 65.5 percent of all the searches run last month, up 0.1 percent from January.

Trailing the list was the Ask Network in fourth place … Read more

VANCOUVER, British Columbia--Less than a century ago, the timing of downhill skiing required someone at the top and bottom of the run, each with a stopwatch synchronized to the time of day.

Every few skiers, the timer at the top would send down a piece of paper with the start times of the last few skiers and then some math would ensue, eventually resulting in the time of the run being calculated.

Oh, how things have changed. Not only is everything electronic, of course, but the sensors are often tied to the athletes themselves. In speedskating, racers wear a transponder … Read more

VANCOUVER, B.C.--When it comes to the controversy over the figure skating gold, Canadian figure skater Patrick Chan sides with American Evan Lysacek.

The decision to award Lysacek the gold, even though Russian Evgeni Plushenko did a quad jump, drew some criticism from some corners, but not from Chan.

"He definitely deserved to have won with two great skates," Chan said, speaking that British Columbia International Media Centre here. "If I had done two great skates just like he did, I think I would be side by side with him."

Chan said that "anyone … Read more

Google actually lost a slight amount of search share during January, according to ComScore, although no one appears too worried.

Google's dominant share of the search market slipped by 0.3 percentage points to 65.4 percent of all searches conducted in the U.S., according to ComScore data released Thursday. Microsoft's Bing was the beneficiary again, increasing its share by 0.6 percentage points to 11.3 percent of all searches. Since it was introduced in May, Bing's share of the search market has improved from 8.4 percent in June to 11.3 percent.

Yahoo … Read more

Both Motorola and Research In Motion are leading their respective markets, according to market researcher ComScore. But Apple is coming on strong.

ComScore's latest data from September through December shows that Motorola was the top cell phone vendor in the U.S. with 23.5 percent market share. It was followed by LG, Samsung, and Nokia, with 21.9 percent, 21.2 percent, and 9.2 percent market share, respectively.

Motorola led the pack, but its market share still declined 1.4 percent between September and December. Samsung had the strongest increase with 0.8 percent growth over the … Read more

Hey, Web publishers! Want to boost your traffic overnight? Talk to ComScore, which is handing out millions of unique visitors.

The Web's dominant traffic counter is in the midst of overhauling its traffic counting system, in response to years of complaints from publishers who insist that their traffic has been undercounted.

Turns out, they were often right.

ComScore's old data, for instance, says the Huffington Post attracted 9.95 million unique visitors in December. But its new numbers peg HuffPo's December traffic at 20 million uniques.

The difference is that ComScore's old system tracked small panels … Read more

Holiday shoppers brought good cheer to e-commerce retailers, spending $27 billion online from November 1 through December 24, a 5 percent jump over last year, ComScore reported Wednesday.

The period from Black Friday through Christmas Eve was also bright and merry as sales grew by around 3.5 percent, even after adjusting for an additional shopping day this year. Consumer electronics proved to be the hottest selling category, rising 20 percent. Larger retailers outpaced smaller vendors thanks in part to their use of free shipping and marketing via social-networking sites, said ComScore.

The growth in this year's online holiday … Read more

A blizzard that pelted much of the Eastern Seaboard with over a foot of snow also led to a spike in last-minute online holiday shopping last weekend, traffic firm ComScore said Tuesday.

Online shopping continues to eat up a bigger chunk of holiday retail each year, but this season, with roads snowbound and temperatures well below freezing in some of the most populous areas of the country at the tail end of the holiday season, it was even more than usual. (Several cities in the mid-Atlantic, like Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., pulled in more snow in a single snowfall … Read more