According to market analysis firm ComScore, Apple's share of the U.S. smartphone market grew by a full percentage point in December of 2009.

The company's report indicates that Motorola still controls a leading position in the overall mobile market, while Blackberry maker RIM actually commands the smartphone market with over 41 percent of the installed base.

RIM's slice of the smartphone pie, however, has shrunk by one percent in the three months between September and December of 2009. Meanwhile, Apple's market share has grown by the same amount, confirming Cupertino's second spot on that list with over 25 percent of the market. Palm is the biggest loser among all handset makers, with a decrease of over 2 percent over the previous reporting period; its share seems to have all gone to Google, which gained almost three percent from last September.

You may recall that Macworld reported earlier this month on another analysis report, issued by ABI Research, which actually claimed that the iPhone had lost market share based on the number of units sold. ComScore's numbers seem to confirm the suspicion that ABI's report reflects shifts in sales due to an overall growth in the demand for smartphones, rather than a decrease of interest in Apple's products.

The ComScore paper also indicates that the overall U.S. mobile market continues to grow. According to the report, 63 percent of all subscribers now use texting (up two percent) and 18 percent use downloaded apps—an increase of one percent. Unfortunately, the company did not provide a breakdown of usage by brand, which would have shed additional light on the usage patterns of smartphone subscribers compared to traditional handset owners.

Editor’s Note: The following article is reprinted from Network World.

Several market research outfits released a bevy of interesting smartphone data this week, highlighted by the Canalys research group’s finding that a majority of smartphones being shipped now have touchscreens.

According to Canalys’ latest report, touchscreen phones accounted for 55 percent of the 54.5 million smartphone units that shipped in the fourth quarter. Touchscreen smartphone shipments for all of 2009 totaled 75 million, or 45 percent of the 166 million smartphones shipped throughout the year.

Canalys found that Apple is still the market leader in touchscreen smartphone shipments with around 25 million units shipped worldwide. However, Nokia is climbing fast in the smartphone market, as its total shipments exploded from just over 500,000 in 2008 to 22.4 million units shipped in 2009. Nokia hit the market in a big way this year by releasing several touchscreen devices, including the N97 and the N900. HTC and Samsung rounded out the top four touchscreen smartphone vendors, as those two companies shipped 7.7 million and 4.8 million units in 2009, respectively.

In terms of overall smartphone operating systems, Canalys found that Symbian remained the runaway leader, as the open source operating system was installed in 78.5 million smartphones that shipped in 2009, or roughly 47 percent of total smartphone shipments. Research in Motion came in second place with 34.5 million smartphones, while Apple finished in third with 25 million. Although Google’s Android operating system came in a distant fifth place in the Canalys rankings, it also grew the fastest of any other operating systems as its 7.8 million smartphone shipments represented a 12-fold increase from the 660,000 smartphones that shipped with Android in 2008.

RIM still tops in U.S. smartphone market

But while touchscreen phones have become all the rage, RIM is still finding success with its trackball-enabled BlackBerry Curve series. According to the latest figures released by IDC, the Curve bested both the Apple iPhone 3GS and the iPhone 3G in the fourth quarter. The iPhone 3GS and 3G were respectively the second- and fourth-highest selling smartphones in the quarter, with Motorola’s Android-based Droid smartphone coming in third. From there, RIM dominated smartphone sales as the BlackBerry Pearl (fifth), Bold (sixth), Storm (seventh) and Tour (ninth) all cracked the top 10 smartphones for the quarter.

Research group comScore, meanwhile, found that RIM maintained its lead in U.S. smartphone operating system market share as the company’s operating system was installed in 41.6 percent of all smartphones sold in the United States in the fourth quarter. Apple’s iPhone operating system had the second-highest smartphone market share in the United States with 25.3 percent, while all Windows Mobile-based devices accounted for 18 percent of all smartphones bought in the United States.

Although RIM’s BlackBerry devices dominated the smartphone market, they still represented just a tiny fraction of all mobile devices sold in the United States. According to comScore, RIM devices accounted for a mere 6.4 percent of mobile devices sold in the United States in the fourth quarter. Motorola (24.9 percent of all mobile devices sold), LG (21.7 percent of all devices sold) and Samsung (20.4 percent of all mobile devices sold) easily eclipsed RIM as the three best-selling mobile device manufacturers in the United States in Q4.

The Brothers in Arms series of World War II combat simulators have stood out on other platforms including the Wii, Xbox, Playstation, and PC for their focus on strategy, realistic combat, and ability to immerse the player into a larger narrative. Gameloft, which has already enjoyed a string of best-selling combat games, is seeking to further establish its reputation in the iPhone and iPod touch market with Brothers in Arms II. Gameloft should put you in combat boots in the coming weeks for a likely launch price of $7.

I sat down with Elvin Glee, Gameloft’s public relations manager, to get a firsthand at this GI-approved title. The first thing I noticed was how fully realized the game seems to be. I’ve often been frustrated by the one-dimensional nature of Gameloft combat offerings such as Modern Combat: Sandstorm and Terminator Salvation, but BiAII’s is much more immersive and complete.

The action gets up close and personal in Brothers in Arms II, coming soon to the iPhone and iPod touch.

During the cut scenes, the camera cinematically shifts between first and third person view—an ability you also have in game. You’ll be able to toss grenades, snipe with a scope, take cover, and even sprint to avoid fire. In the game’s tutorial, my character was about to be executed by some Japanese soldiers when a buddy sniped my would-be killers. The camera then shifted from first person to third, and the mission began.

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Box.net provides cloud-based file-sharing and collaboration tools aimed at business users. A variety of iPhone apps already integrate with the service.

Of course, Box.net offers an iPhone app of its own as well, and on Monday the company announced that the app has been upgraded with oodles of new features. In addition to the app's core functionality—which lets you view and share your files—the new version incorporates the ability to comment upon the documents and folders you're sharing. That way, you can exchange notes with your colleagues on important documents, from anywhere.

Box.net also announced Tuesday new integration with the iPhone app Quickoffice. The app, which allows you to create, view, and edit Microsoft Word and Excel documents from your iPhone, can now open files from (and save files to) Box users' accounts.

iPhone developers who are jealous of the growing list of Box.net-compatible apps can take solace in one other announcement from the company: It's unveiled new (and free!) OpenBox Mobile APIs, which should allow any mobile developer to create apps that tie into the service.

The Box.net iPhone app is a free download and works with an iPhone or iPod touch running iPhone OS 2.0 or later.

Some hurdles remain to using your iPhone for holding iChat-like video confabs—not the least of which is that the phone’s camera is on the opposite side of the display. But one company is looking to remove some of the technical hurdles, releasing its video chat technology to iPhone developers on Tuesday.

GIPS VideoEngine Mobile from Global IP Solutions is video chat technology that lets developers integrate video conferencing features into their mobile apps. The technology is already available on the Windows Mobile platform and will soon be making its way to Android, according to a Global IP Solutions spokesman I talked to.

Global IP Solutions says its technology delivers high-quality real-time video chat to mobile applications, without the delays, jitters, and echoes associated with IP networks. The GIPS VideoEngine Mobile technology could be used, in theory, to enable two-way video chat between an iPhone and another mobile device or computer.

What kind of applications are we talking about? Think video conferencing, the Global IP spokesman told me, allowing you to check back in with the office while you’re on the road. Other possibilities include video chats with friends and family or a mobile nanny-cam that checks in on your home when you’re away. Global IP Solutions features demos of the technology in action on its Website.

Global IP Solutions says that some of its customers already have the GIPS VideoEngine Mobile technology, but the company is mum on who that might be. It does expect to see the technology deployed in the next six months.

That was fast. Just one week after Google posted an advertisement for a phone support program manager, the company is offering telephone support for Nexus One customers—but will only answer questions about the status of their phone orders and shipments.

Nexus One customers who want to inquire about the status of their order or shipping can call Google at 1-888-48-NEXUS (63987) between the hours of 7 a.m. and 10 p.m., Eastern Standard Time, according to the Google Nexus One support page.

Google won’t directly handle technical support calls or inquiries about repairs or returns. For those calls, the support page refers customers to High Tech Computer (HTC), the Taiwanese company that manufactures the phones for Google.

Customer support has been a sore point for Nexus One customers.

When the phone first began shipping last month, there was no one for customers to call when a problem arose. Google only offered to support customers through its support Web site or by e-mail. Some users tried calling HTC and U.S. operator T-Mobile, which subsidizes the cost of the handset when users sign a two-year contract, but they complained that one company would often refer calls to the other.

A Google spokeswoman could not immediately be reached for comment.

In addition to offering phone support for the Nexus One, Google also cut the termination fee for users who returned the handset after the two-week grace period. Google reduced the termination fee by $200, which means users will now have to $350 in termination fees to Google and T-Mobile instead of $550.

The best things in life are free. The trouble is tracking down all those wonderful free things.

It’s no different on the App Store, which—let’s be honest here-is bursting at the seams, thanks those 140,000 or so apps that Apple’s so fond of talking up. Little wonder, then, that one of the more interesting features introduced in the latest version of App Popular—an app that exists to help you find other iPhone and iPod touch apps and sends you push notifications to alert you of price changes—is a new promo code streams section. Users in the U.S. can use App Popular to find promotional codes supplied by developers for free downloads of their apps.

Here’s how it works: In version 1.2 of App Popular, go to the Promos Stream section, which lists all the apps available for free along with the number of codes remaining for each app. (Codes are available on a first come, first served basis.) Tap the cell row of the the app you want, and App Popular lets you view more details or grab the code. From there, you enter your e-mail address, and the app will send you the promo code along with instructions for redeeming it. Only one free code per app per phone, please.

App Popular now features a section that lets you access promo codes for free downloads of paid iPhone apps.

App developers can submit a minimum of five promo codes for paid apps in exchange for a week’s placement in this section of App Popular. Not surprisingly, the response from app makers to this new feature has been very positive, App Popular co-founder John R. Haigh told me via e-mail. “Developers have very openly participated and some have provided us with 15-20 codes per app and/or have submitted codes for multiple apps,” he wrote.

Access to promo codes isn’t the only addition in App Popular 1.2. The update, which arrived on the App Store late last week, also introduces an alternative hybrid search engine that includes price filters. App Popular also improved list viewing in the My App Lists section, while adding alert badges to the My Tracked Apps feature for tracking app price changes.

App Popular runs on any iPhone or iPod touch running the iPhone OS 3.0 update.

ZoomMediaPlus has announced the ZoomIt, a dock-connector accessory that lets you use SD memory cards with the iPhone and iPod touch.

The ZoomIt, which is essentially a compact SD-card reader that plugs into the dock-connector port on the bottom of your iPhone or iPod touch, works with its own free iPhone app to let you access documents and media stored on SD cards; for example, photos from a digital camera, video from an SD video camera, or documents transferred from a netbook.

According to the company, the ZoomIt software will let you view any file supported by iPhone OS 3, including images, audio files, video files, and PowerPoint, Excel, Word, PDF, and other document types. A built-in media player will let you view video and listen to audio, and a document viewer will let you view images and other documents. From within the app, you'll be able to create hierarchical folders in the app's storage space on your iPhone and then move files to and between those directories—including transferring files to and from any SD card. You'll also be able to move photos from a camera's SD card directly to your iPhone's camera roll, and vice versa. Finally, the app will let you share files via email or social-media sites such as Flickr and Facebook.

ZoomMediaPlus claims the ZoomIt app will eventually be able to handle copy-protected content; the company hopes content producers will distribute SD cards pre-loaded with video and audio.

The ZoomIt's official price is $60, although you can currently pre-order the device for $50, with initial orders shipping in April.