What difference does a day make? Maybe not much. But give Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) a few months to work with, and this company will out-and-out mug you.
That seems to be the upshot of ComScore's latest report on market-share movements in the smartphone operating system space. During the three months since ComScore last checked in, Android has just plain stolen the market for cell phone operating systems:
Who's Who in Smartphone OS Market Share
Source: ComScore. Three-month average for smartphone operating system market shares.
Granted, Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM) retains its place as market-share leader, while Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) remains No.2. But Google leapfrogged Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) to capture third place (which can only mean good things for Motorola's (NYSE: MOT) next earnings report), and it's closing in quickly on Cupertino. Keep in mind also that this measures total users, not purchases within a period, which makes Google's Android growth even more impressive.
The most obvious conclusion we can draw from today's chart is this: Google gained at the expense of "everybody else." But if you look really close, there is one caveat to that broad-brush assertion, and its name is ... Palm.
A round of applause?
Now, I don't want to make too much of this. Clearly, with a mere sub-5% market share, Palm remains very much the redheaded stepchild of smartphones. But somehow, the disaster I warned of when Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) announced that it was buying Palm has not come to pass. (Yet.) To the contrary, H-Palm managed to hold onto its sliver of the market. In an industry where everybody else lost ground to Google, that deserves at least a small round of applause.
Is Palm's hold just a result of the company's market share bleeding down to old users, or is there something more at work? Let us know what you think in the comments area below.
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Fool contributor Rich Smith owns shares of Google. Rich is not a licensed economist, but he plays one on the Web. Check out his latest stock recommendations on Motley Fool CAPS. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
