Rival operating systems for smartphones may be reaching a stalemate in the US market.

Beancounters at Nielsen found that Google’s Android operating system maintained its position as the most popular OS, with 37 per cent of all US smartphones using it. That’s been unchanged over the last three months, however, and both Apple and BlackBerry, on 26 and 22 per cent respectively, are also basically unchanged.

Smartphones now make up approximately 37 per cent of the US market, Neilsen found, but people using Android used more data than Apple or BlackBerry users. While this is good news for BlackBerry, whose smartphone operating system share was in decline the new data indicates that its prospects are not as bleak as some have suggested.

It looks like the market has reached saturation with everyone who wants a smartphone having gotten one. It also means that market share will stay the same.