ComScore: Verizon iPhone was top phone in Feb

A new report from analyst ComScore says that the Verizon iPhone was the most acquired handset during the month of February.

ComScores sampling, which consisted of more than 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers, notes that the surge of handset buyers responding to the phones launch earlier this year helped give Apple the strongest gain of market share in the OEM category. That gain amounts to an additional 0.9 percent between November 2010 and the end of February 2011.

Nonetheless, Apple remains below competitors at 7.5 percent overall in terms of OEM market share. Leading the way is Samsung at 24.8 percent, followed by LG at 20.9 percent, Motorola at 16.1 percent, and Research in Motion at 8.6 percent.

Breaking down the platforms running on those devices, ComScore has Googles Android topping the charts at 33 percent, growing an impressive 7 percent in that three-month period. Google is trailed by RIM at 28.9 percent, which ComScore says dropped 4.6 percent. Coming in at third place is Apple at 25.2 percent, gaining 0.2 percent. Both Microsoft and Palm saw drops of just more than 1 percent, bringing Microsoft down to 7.7 percent and Palm at 2.8 percent.

One other tidbit from the report notes that users are increasingly accessing social-networking sites, downloading apps, and using their phones Web browsers, with gains in all three of those categories topping 3 percent. The firm also says that 68.8 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers text message with their phones, which was up just 1.7 percent compared to Novembers numbers.