That Android is taking market share from Blackberry and iPhone is not a news anymore, the news is how much has it taken and how much has it grown. The latest smartphone market share survey from Nielsen looks at data from November 2010. This data shows the iPhone has retained pole position in overall smartphone marketshare in the U.S. with an estimated 28.6% of the market. BlackBerry and Android are now neck to neck with 26.1% and 25.8% respectively. Android is especially pupolar among new smartphone users.

The popularity of the Android OS among those who purchased a smartphone in the last six months (40%) makes it the leading OS among recent acquirers. AS Android continues to grow, it will be interesting to see how much long it will take to surpass iPhone in market share.

According to comScore’s latest analysis of the U.S. mobile market, Android has grown significantly in the period from February to May 2010, while all other major operating systems experienced a drop in their market share.

In this period, RIM was still the leading mobile smartphone platform, dropping from 42.1% to 41.7% market share. It was followed by Apple which somewhat surprisingly dropped from 25.4% to 24.4% and Microsoft which dropped from 15.1% to 13.2%. Android was fourth on the list, but it rose from 9% to 13% market share in this same period. It was followed by Palm which dropped from 5.4% to 4.8% market share.

One has to take into account that these numbers are relative; most smartphone platforms actually gained subscribers as the smartphone market overall grew 8.1%, with 49.1 million people in the U.S. owning smartphones during this period. Still, Android is growing faster – much faster – than its competitors at this point.

As far as top mobile manufacturers go, Samsung grabbed the first place, growing from 21.4% to 22.4% market share. It was followed by LG, RIM, Motorola and Nokia, all of which lost a small chunk of their share, with the exception of RIM which grew from 8.2% to 8.7%.

[via Mashable]