comScore just took the wraps off its data for the first quarter of 2012, and it confirms what we’ve been seeing over the past few months.

In the U.S., Samsungand Android are the manufacturer and mobile OS to beat.

Samsung maintains its lead with 26% of the total mobile headset market share, up from 25.3% in Q4 2011. That 0.7 of a percentage point might have been taken directly from LG, who at 19.3% of the market share is down from 20% last year. Rounding out the top five are Apple, Motorola, and HTCat 14%, 12.8%, and 6% respectively, with only Apple seeing a gain from last quarter. This is the first time in a few quarters that HTC appears in the data, as Q1 marks its surpassing RIM in total market share. It should be noted that comScore measures all mobile handsets, including "dumb" phones.

On the OS side, not much has changed in terms of ranking. Android has gained 3.7 percentage points, up to 51% of total smartphone market share. iOS gained too, up to 30.7%, with RIM, Microsoft, and Symbian at 12.3%, 3.9%, and 1.4% respectively. This quarter marks yet another loss for the Blackberry manufacturer, down 3.7 points from Q4 2011.

As for usage, 74.3% of U.S. smartphone owners sent text messages on their devices, while 50% downloaded apps and 49.3% browsed the web. Social networking is used by 36.1% of total users, while games and music are used by 32.6% and 25.3% respectively. A full breakdown of all the data can be found at the source.

Source: comScore
Via: Androidcentral