ComScore just released its smartphone market share numbers for March through May, and unsurprisingly the trend continues from previous months. Android phone saw the most significant growth in market share in May, up 4.0 percentage points to capture 13.0 percent of smartphone subscribers. Of course, despite Android’s gain, RIM and Apple dominated, with RIM taking 41.7 percent share of U.S. smartphone subscribers, followed by Apple with 24.4 percent share. Microsoft saw a 13.2 percent share and Palm rounded the top five out with a 4.8 percent share. In total, 49.1 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in May, up 8.1 percent from the corresponding February period.

In terms of manufacturer share, the report found Samsung to be the top handset manufacturer overall with 22.4 percent market share. LG ranked second with 21.5 percent share, followed by Motorola (21.2 percent share), RIM (8.7 percent share, up 0.5 percentage point) and Nokia (8.1 percent share).

For the three month period from March to May, comScore reports that 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices. Across the board, comScore’s numbers show mobile phone users in the U.S. are interacting more with their phones. In terms of actions, 65.2 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device in May, up 1.4 percent versus the prior three month period. Mobile browsing also increased to 31.9 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers (up 2.3 percentage points). Subscribers who used downloaded applications comprised 30.0 percent of the mobile audience, representing an increase of 2.1 percentage points from the previous period. Accessing of social networking sites or blogs also saw growth, increasing 2.6 percentage points to 20.8 percent of mobile subscribers.

While Android smartphones were the only type of phone to see a gain in market share for the three month period, the platform is still way behind Apple’s mobile user base. Android still has a ways to go in terms of market share before it can be seen as a major competitor to Apple, but it is nice to see that the platform is slowly gaining a larger user base.

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U.S. comScore video metrix stats are out today, with the number of video viewers rebounding in the month of May. According to the web metrics company, 183 million U.S. Internet users watched online video during the month compared to 178 million in April. ComScore reports that YouTube saw record viewership in May with an all-time high of 14.6 billion videos viewed and surpassing the threshold of 100 videos per viewer for the first time. The report also showed that 144.1 million viewers watched 14.6 billion videos on YouTube.com (which works out to 101.2 videos per viewer).

In May, U.S. Internet users watched nearly 34 billion videos, with Google Sites taking the top spot with 14.6 billion videos, representing 43.1 percent of all videos viewed online. ComScore says that YouTube accounted for the vast majority of videos viewed at the property. Hulu came in second with 1.2 billion videos, or 3.5 percent of all online videos viewed, a slight increase from April. Microsoft Sites ranked third with 642 million (1.9 percent), followed by Vevo with 430 million (1.3 percent) and Viacom Digital with 347 million (1.0 percent).

According to the release, 84.8 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video. The average Hulu viewer watched 27.0 videos, totaling 2.7 hours of video per viewer. The duration of the average online video was 4.3 minutes.

In terms of number of viewers, nearly 183 million viewers watched an average of 186 videos per viewer in May. Google Sites attracted 144.6 million unique viewers during the month (101.2 videos per viewer), followed by Yahoo Sites with 46.0 million viewers (7.3 videos per viewer), and Vevo with 45.6 million viewers (9.4 videos per viewer). Vevo grew again this month, and moved up the list one position in the May ranking taking the #3 spot with 45.6 million viewers and an average of 9.4 videos per viewer.

With respect to video advertising in May, Tremor Media once again took the top spot as the number one video ad network with a potential reach of 102.8 million viewers, or 56.2 percent of the total video viewing audience. ScanScout Network ranked second with a potential reach of 99.3 million viewers (54.3 percent penetration) followed by YuMe Video Network with 87.5 million viewers (47.8 percent).

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Audience measurement firm comScore has released its May 2010 U.S. Search Data report, and it shows continued market share gains for Yahoo and Microsoft.

Yahoo and Bing/MSN each added approximately 60 bps and 30 bps to 18.3% and 12.1%, respectively. Google is down, claims comScore, declining approximately 70 bps for the second consecutive month to 63.7%.

But that’s not the whole story, and investors need to caution when interpreting the data as presented by comScore, say analysts.

Gleacher & Company’s Broadpoint.AmTech puts it this way:

While these numbers are correct on an apples-to-apples basis (in the sense that certain types of searches – e.g. contextual shortcuts and slide-shows – are being counted consistently across properties), the trending data for which we think comScore is most useful shows a different picture.

J.P. Morgan has this to say about the reported numbers:

User interface changes continue to cloud the picture. Google, Yahoo! and MSN all made notable changes in April and May, according to comScore. As such, numbers may not be directly comparable to past months.
…
We think more months of data under the new methodology could clarify matters.

We’ve detailed how Yahoo has boosted its search market share with these ‘tricks’ last month.

When adjusted, backing out Yahoo and Bing/MSN’s use of contextual shortcuts and image slide-shows from both May and April, Broadpoint.AmTech estimates that Yahoo’s share actually declined roughly 30 bps month over month in May to 16.6%, while Microsoft Sites’ share was flat at approximately 10.8%.

Google, after a small data collection adjustment to the April data (namely a change in how Google handles searches with typos), appears to have gained roughly 30 bps of share in May to 66.4%, says Broadpoint.AmTech. However, Google’s domestic core search market share was 63.7% in May, down slightly from 64.4% in April, J.P. Morgan claims.

According to the reported data, total US core search volume increased 11.2% year over year in May, an acceleration from 5.3% growth in April, adds J.P. Morgan. However, adjusting for the impact of user interface changes, the firm estimates search volume was up roughly 7%.

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comScore has just released its US online video rankings for January 2010, and the results aren’t positive. Overall views dropped by around 2.5%, with  32.4 billion in January vs. 33.2 billion in December. And Hulu, which celebrated crossing the 1 billion view milestone for the first time in December, dipped back down to 903 million views. The drop can’t be blamed entirely on seasonality, either, — January 2009’s overall video views were up 4% over December 2008.  That said, video views are still up 119% year over year.

Rankingwise, there weren’t many changes. Google Sites (which is essentially YouTube) is still the reigning champion, with Hulu and Microsoft Sites still rounding out the top three. Fox Interactive Media fell from 4th to 6th place as its views dropped from 550 million December to 293 million in January — a drop of around 47%.

I suspect the drop in overall video growth will be shortlived, given the huge amount of video consumed online during the Olympics last month.

Here are the stats from January 2010:

And here are the stats from December 2009:

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