Apple Inc. (AAPL), Google Inc. (GOOG) Still Dominate Smartphones

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) have continued the trend of being the two dominant companies in the smartphone market when categorized by their operating systems. in a new survey by ComScore. In the three months that ended in July 2012, the Android operating system by Google took up more than 50 percent of the market, while the iOS from Apple taks up more than a third of the market. Both companies had been trending upward for several months.

At the end of July,  Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android was in 52.2 percent of subscribed smartphones in the marketplace, which was up from 50.8 percent at the end of April. Meanwhile, the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) iOS operating system went up from 31.4 percent to 33.4 percent. As a means of comparison, the other three of the top five operating systems all lost market share. The other three “leaders” – BlackBerry by Research in Motion Limited (NASDAQ:RIMM), Windows Phone by Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Symbian by Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK) – have seen their combined market share of 16.9 percent drop to 13.9 percent in July 2012.

Looking at this information, it would make more than sense to see Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK) drop its own Symbian operating system and jump on board the Windows Phone bandwagon, as Windows made up 3.6 percent of the market, which was four times more than Symbian. However, it can be more concerning that Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has lost market share in the months leading up to its Windows Phone 8 launch this week while the two dominant OSs actually grew their market share by more than 3 percentage points and now have Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) making up 85 percent of the existing smartphone market in the U.S.

How much impact the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) patent victory over Google Inc. (NASDAQ:OGG) partner Samsung will affect the market share is not yet known, but at least from a public-relations perspective, it may be damaging to Google. This competition between the two will be watched closely by key investors of both companies, including hedge-fund managers like Julian Robertson of Tiger Management, who had $59 million invested in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and $18 million in Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) at the end of June.