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The iPhone's dominance of the smartphone market is under serious threat for the first time. Android is gaining ground, open Symbian is looming, and alternative operating systems are increasingly gaining features that users really want - even Windows Phone 7 will have Adobe Flash, we learn; while Apple may have to allow Opera Mini into its App Store, despite the competition with Safari, to avoid being disadvantaged against Android (which just got the popular mobile browser). Now the latest figures from digital metrics firm comScore show the iPhone stagnating in terms of mobile internet use in the US, Apple's major heartland of support.

Apple's share of the US smartphone market was flat at 25.1%, in contrast to a leap of almost two percentage points by RIM, to extend its lead to a huge 43%. This is likely to be whittled down over coming quarters as Android smartphones gain ground - they grew by 4.3% to get 7.1% in Q4 and some analysts expect them to account for 20% of the installed base, and as much as half of new smartphone sales, by year end. Motorola and HTC are the leading Android vendors in the US. Nokia is also expected to make more US impact this year. Windows Mobile had 15.7% of the smartphone segment, and Palm had 5.7%.

As mobile web and open OS capabilities, associated with high end phones, move into the mass market, the vendor map is set to shift. In particular, in the US, Android has made a more aggressive move into the midmarket than iPhone or BlackBerry, the smartphone leaders in north America.

For phones as a whole, ComScore's Q4 survey of more than 30,000 consumers showed that US mobile subscribers age 13 or over were using Motorola phones more than any other brand. It had an estimated 23% market share of the active installed base, with its Android handsets the main contributor to growth, followed by LG on 21.7%, Samsung on 21.1%, Nokia on 9.1% and RIM on 7.8%.

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