iPhone Chips Away at BlackBerrys U.S. Smartphone Lead

New data from Internet market researcher comScore shows that Apple’s iPhone made some gains in 2009’s fourth quarter against BlackBerry, the market share leader.

RIM’s BlackBerry platform leads with a little less than 42 percent of the market. Apple is second, with more than 25 percent of smarphone users owning iPhones. That’s a 1 percent drop for BlackBerry and a 1 percent increase for the iPhone. Both companies reported strong sales in 4Q 2009, despite the troubled economy.

Third on the list is Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform, which has 18 percent of the market. That’s a 1 percent drop from Q3 2009. Palm and Google were fourth and fifth, respectively; although Palm saw more than a 2 percent drop in market share, while Google more than doubled its share from 2.5 percent to 5.2 percent.

Numbers can vary from researcher to researcher. Just last fall, In-Stat claimed the iPhone had broken the 30 percent mark in market share.