Verizon iPhone Leads U.S. Mobile Phone Sales in February as Android Surge Continues

comScore late last week released the results of its latest monthly survey of U.S. mobile phone users, revealing that Apple's new CDMA iPhone released on Verizon that month ranked as the best-selling phone during the month. That performance helped boost Apple's share of the mobile phone market in the U.S. to 7.5% for the three-month period ending in February, up from 6.6% in the prior period.

When looking only at smartphones and the operating systems running them, Android's usage continued to soar during the period, up 7 percentage points to move past Research in Motion to claim the top spot in overall usage in the U.S. (not new purchases) with 33% of the market. RIM slipped to 28.9%, while Apple nudged up slightly to 25.2% as Microsoft and Palm continued to drop.

That result seems to mirror other recent surveys that show Apple essentially maintaining its relative share in the rapidly growing smartphone market while Android surges at the expense of Research in Motion and smaller players.