Android has soared up the European smartphone rankings in the last 12 months to take second place in the league table of smartphone operating systems, according to the latest figures from comScore’s MobiLens service.

For the three months to the end of July 2011, Android commanded a 22.3 per cent share of the smartphone market in the EU5 (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain), up from just 6 per cent for the corresponding period a year ago. Symbian remains in front on 37.8 per cent, (down from 53.9 per cent), while Apple is in third on 20.3 per cent (19 per cent). RIM is fourth on 9.4 per cent (8 per cent), with Microsoft in fifth on 6.7 per cent, down from 11.5 per cent a year ago. For the three-month average period ending in July 2011, 88.4m mobile subscribers across the EU5 reported using smartphones, up 44 per cent from the previous year. 

As the figures reveal, Android’s growth over the past year outpaced that of other top smartphone platforms by a significant margin, with the Apple iOS and RIM platforms each experiencing gains of only slightly more than one percentage point. Meanwhile, Symbian’s and Microsoft’s share of the smartphone platform market declined, with Symbian conceding a sizeable percentage of the market.

In July 2011, 19.7m EU5 smartphone users were using Android mobile devices, with the greatest number of users in the UK (6.3m), followed by France (4.5m) and Germany (4m). Across the EU5, HTC owned the largest share of the Android device market at 34.6 per cent, followed by Samsung on 31.7 per cent.

A closer look at the individual EU5 countries shows HTC and Samsung leading in device share for various markets. In the UK, HTC accounted for more than 50 per cent of Android devices in use, a significantly higher percentage than other markets. While Samsung had the second largest share of Android devices in the UK, it accounted for less than half of HTC’s share (21.6 per cent). However, in all other EU5 markets, Samsung ranked as the leading Android device, with a 42.3 per cent market share in France and greater than 30 per cent market share in Germany, Italy and Spain.

“Smartphone adoption has seen significant growth from the previous year, driven in large part by the increasing popularity of the Google Android platform,” says Jeremy Copp, comScore Europe’s vice president for Mobile. “Although Symbian continues to lead the EU5 smartphone market, Android is gaining fast, and recently passed Apple to become the second most popular platform. Network operators, publishers and advertisers looking to effectively reach the European mobile audience must pay close attention to the continued growth of Android in the region, as it will likely have far-reaching implications for the mobile media landscape.”