In other news... Google can remotely erase applications from your Android phone

ANDROID has taken the smartphone platform lead from Research in Motion (RIM) in the US for the first time.

Google Android

AFTER just two short months in second place, Google Android has taken the smartphone platform lead from Research in Motion (RIM) in the US for the first time.

Android's share of smartphone subscribers jumped to 31.2 per cent in January, a 7.7 point change from its 23.5 per cent market share in October 2010.

Th figures came from comScore in a March 7 report on the US mobile subscriber market share.

The majority of Android's new smartphone subscriptions appear to have come from RIM, which dropped to 30.4 per cent.

In third place Apple's share of smartphone subscribers remained relatively flat at 24.7 per cent.

Microsoft's Windows Phone 7, a smartphone operating system that Microsoft hoped would turn around their eroding share of smartphone subscribers, has done little to ease the company's pain.

Windows Phone 7 first became available to the US public in November, however, Microsoft's share of smartphone subscribers dropped from 9.7 per cent to 8 per cent during the period from October 2010 to January 2011.

"The study surveyed more than 30,000 US mobile subscribers and found Samsung to be the top handset manufacturer overall with 24.9 per cent market share," comScore said.

LG (20.8 per cent), Motorola (16.5 per cent), RIM (8.6 per cent) and Apple (7.0 per cent) were also among the top five mobile handset manufacturers in January.

Google yesterday announced it had remotely purged Android smartphones of applications tainted with malicious code that could take control of the handsets and steal information.

Mobile phone security firm LookOut said the purpose of the "DroidDream" code was to "download additional applications and install them silently as system applications on the device".

"DroidDream could be considered a powerful zombie agent that can install any applications silently and execute code with root privileges at will," it said.

Google was patching the vulnerability that cyber crooks could exploit and adding measures to prevent applications containing the "malware" from getting into the Android Market of programs for mobile devices.

Google yanked the contaminated applications from the Android Market and then took the unusual step of hitting a "kill switch" that remotely removed from smartphones any of the more than 50 applications containing the dangerous code.

"We removed the malicious applications from Android Market, suspended the associated developer accounts, and contacted law enforcement about the attack," Rich Cannings of Android Security said in a message posted at the Google blog during the weekend.

"We are remotely removing the malicious applications from affected devices."

Google believed that hackers were only able to get codes identifying smartphones and which version of Android ran particular devices.

The attack didn't work on handsets operating on Android 2.2.2 or newer.