Google Inc.'s platform Android is the operating system for the majority of smartphones, taking ownership of the market share by 51.7 percent, an article in The State Column reports.

A recent study by comScore Inc. revealed a surprising result. The study, which ran from November 2013 to January 2014, aimed to rank the big players in the mobile device area in terms of market share. It presented Apple Inc. as the ruler in the actual smartphone sphere, while Google's Android is the main player in the OS field.

Operating System 

Google currently holds the gold in the operating system race, courtesy of its Android platform which operates a majority of smartphones out there - from Samsung's devices to Motorola and HTC phones.

Apple surprisingly comes tailing Android with its iOS representing a 41.6 percent market share. Unlike Android, that gains prominence by spreading across different smartphones, iOS is exclusively installed on Apple's iPhones and iPads.

Taking more than 90 percent of the mobile OS market, Google and Apple have left a very small portion for other players. Microsoft comes third with the Windows Phone OS, taking a 3.2 percent share. Following close and almost equal to Microsoft is Blackberry OS, which comes in at fourth place with 3.1 percent market share.

Mobile Devices

Collectively, Apple's iPhones gives the company a commanding share of the market with a 41.6 percent share. In contrast its archrival, South Korean phone maker Samsung, had a 26.7 percent share, as per comScore's study. Other phone manufacturers were left far behind by the two giant manufacturers, with LG landing on third place with a 6.9 percent share.

Factors

Critics of the study points out that during the time when study was commenced in November 2013, Apple had released its latest model just two months earlier. However, to those who have been following the mobile computing world closely, Apple's dominance in the smartphone marketplace did not come as a surprise.