What's the most popular mobile OS out there? Android, by a nose, Nielsen reported in a report Thursday.

What's the most popular mobile OS out there? Android, by a nose, Nielsen reported in a report Thursday.

In a study of 14,701 Americans, The Nielsen Company reported that 29 percent of those postpaid mobile subscribers surveyed owned an Android-based phone, compared to 27 percent who said they owned an iOS device and 27 percent who owned RIM device of some sort. The Windows family of devices has a 10 percent market share, Nielsen reported, followed by 4 percent for HP and its PalmOS, and just 2 percent for Symbian.

The survey isn't a comprehensive study of sales figures, but rather a representation of the "hearts and minds" of the mobile OS market.

Interestinly, HTC represents a sizeable chunk of the market, if the respective shares of both its place in the Android and Windows markets are combined. But both Apple and RIM dominate the market, since they manufacture the devices that use their own operating system.

Perhaps the most interesting breakdown, however, is Nielsen's dissection of the ages of the users who purchased each of the smartphones.

Somewhat surprisingly, the breakdown of the various operating systems is pretty evenly spread across the various age brackets that Nielsen charted. Only one categories showed a slight discrepancy: 6 percent of those between 18 and 24 expressed a preference for Android, versus 4 percent for iOS and BlackBerry.

In 2010, Nokia was still the top seller, with 461 million units sold and 28.9 percent of the market, Gartner reported. That represented a 7.5 percent drop in market share from 2009. Coming in behind Nokia were Samsung, LG, Research in Motion, and Apple. Samsung had 17.6 percent of the global market, down from 19.5 percent in 2009, while LG had 7.1 percent - also a drop from 19.1 percent in 2009.