Latest research released Friday shows that Google Android has become the No.1 smartphone platform in the United States in the first quarter as more smartphone manufacturers have adopted the operating system.

During the three months ending in March, Google Android grew 6. 0 percentage points to 34.7 percent market share, among the 72.5 million U.S. smartphone users, reported comScore, an Internet marketing research company.

The number of smartphone users increased by 15 percent on a quarter-on-quarter basis, said the research.

Research in Motion, developer of Blackberry smartphones, ranked second with 27.1 percent, a slide of 4.5 percentage points on a quarter-on-quarter basis. Apple grew 0.5 points to 25.5 percent share, followed by Microsoft (7.5 percent) and Palm (2.8 percent).

According to the research, 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices in the first quarter. Samsung ranked as the top handset maker with 24.5 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers, and LG ranked second with 20.9 percent share, followed by Motorola (15.8 percent) and RIM (8.4 percent). Apple continued to gain share following the launch of the Verizon iPhone, growing by 1.1 percentage points to 7.9 percent of subscribers.

On mobile content use, 68.6 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device in March. Browsers were used by 38.6 percent of subscribers (up 2.2 percentage points), while downloaded applications were used by 37.3 percent (up 2.9 percentage points).

Accessing of social networking sites or blogs increased 2.6 percentage points, representing 27.3 percent of mobile subscribers. Playing games comprised 25.7 percent of the mobile audience, while listening to music represented 17.9 percent, said the report.