No points for guessing who’s on top in the smartphone race. For the time period of July, August and September, Android’s U.S. market share grew from 39% to 42.8%, extending its lead once again. The Nielsen numbers match up pretty well with other statistical reports. The market is growing enough that Apple also increased its share, up to 28.3%.  44% of US mobile users now own a smartphone of one kind or another.

Breaking down the share of Android sales, HTC remains top dog in America with a 15% market share overall, with 35% of Android sales. Next is Motorola with 24.3%, followed closely by Samsung at 23.6%. That’s an interesting metric, considering that Samsung is far and away the top manufacturer of total phones worldwide. Other Android manufacturers made up nearly 17% of Android’s total, with just over 7% of total market share.

BlackBerry, Windows Phone/Mobile and Symbian continue their downward slide, despite the best efforts of their parent companies. So does WebOS, but calling HP’s bumbling any sort of “best effort” would be a disservice to little league baseball teams everywhere. Between the two of them, Android and iOS control 71% of the US smartphone market, and an eye-popping 83% of all mobile app downloads. Keep in mind that Q4 results are likely to skew a bit with the launch of the iPhone 5 iPhone 4S  – that tends to happen when you only have one release every year.

[via SlashGear]