A Growth Spurt for Android’s Market Share

In the past three months, Google’s (GOOG) Android operating system has more than doubled its share of the mobile market. Android, comScore (SCOR) reports, claimed a 3.8 percent market share in November and now holds about nine percent.

That’s an additional 5.2 percentage points in three months, an impressive gain, particularly considering that Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone OS remained essentially flat at 25.4 percent (down 0.1 percent).

Clearly, the conga line of new Android phones parading to market these days has given the OS some real traction, pushing it ahead of Palm (PALM), whose webOS share declined from 7.2 percent to 5.4 percent, and ever closer to Microsoft (MSFT), which saw its share slip to 15.1 percent from 19.1 percent.

And what of Research in Motion (RIMM), the mobile market’s undisputed leader? Its share rose to 42.1 percent from 40.8 percent.