Honours even as Android takes market leading 39% share in US, but Apple named as top OEM

It's almost as if, owing to the press prevalence Apple enjoys, a succession of reports declaring Android's dominance in the US needs to come out before anyone will believe it.

Nielsen's assertion that Google's platform is top dog – taking a 39 percent share in June in the process – is by no means the first, and it likely won't be the last either.

However, while Android now has an 11 percentage point lead over former champion iOS (rival BlackBerry falling away to a 20 percent share), Apple remains the largest smartphone manufacturer by an almost equal distance.

"Because Apple is the only company manufacturing smartphones with the iOS operating system, it is clearly the top smartphone manufacturer in the United States," Nielsen says on its blog.

"Other leading manufacturers include HTC, whose Android phones represents 14 percent of the smartphone market and whose Windows Mobile/WP7 devices account for 6 percent of the market; and Motorola, whose Android devices are owned by 11 percent of smartphone consumers."

Fellow Android and Windows Phone manufacturer Samsung is some distance behind its main rivals on a 10 percent share.

That's a situation that will no doubt change when the firm's Galaxy S II handset – which has already clocked up sales of 5.5 million units around the globe – hits the US in August.

[source: Nielsen]