It's official: Android now has a greater market share than iPhone across the EU5 countries of France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. According to newly published data from the comScore MobiLens service , nearly one in four smartphone users in the EU5 region were using smartphones running on a Google Android platform.

In the three months covered by the research, ending in July 2011, there were a total of 88.4 million smartphone users amongst mobile subscribers in the EU5 which represents a 44 percent increase from the year before. Of these, the undoubted winner was Android with an increase in market share from 16.2 percentage points to 22.3 percent. Indeed, Google's Android platform showed the fastest growth in market share of any of the smartphone platforms.

When it comes to the devices themselves, the clear winner was HTC which accounted for a staggering 34.6 percent of all Android smartphones across the EU5 region during this period. Samsung wasn't too far behind though, with an impressive 31.7 percent share. Talking in numbers of devices owned, the report reveals that there were some 19.7 million EU5 smartphone users adopting the Android platform, most of them in the UK where some 6.3 million were to be found.

Both Apple with it iOS and RIM with the BlackBerry platform could barely muster a single percentage point in terms of market share gains, which kind of puts the spectacular rise of the Android-powered smartphone into some perspective. It could be worse though, Apple and RIM could be Microsoft or Symbian; both of which saw their respective market shares fall or in the case of Symbian tumble would be a better description (-16.1 percent) despite the fact that it remains, for now, the market leader in Europe.

According to Jeremy Copp, comScore Europe vice president for Mobile, Google Android is driving the increasing popularity of smartphones, not Apple iOS nor the market leading Symbian platform. "Although Symbian continues to lead the EU5 smartphone market" Copp says "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".