Analysis firm comScore has released the latest mobile subscriber market share numbers, for the month ended March 31st, 2010.

At the end of the period, there were 234 million Americans with mobile phones, with the most popular manufacturer, by fractions, being Samsung at 21.92 percent.

In second place was Motorola with 21.9 percent, and LG just as close behind with 21.8 percent.

Rounding out the top 5 was RIM at 8.3 percent and Nokia at the same percentage. Apple, with only one phone available, came in sixth at 5 percent.

As for top carriers, Verizon led the way at 31.1 percent, AT&T came in second at 25.2 percent, and Sprint and T-Mobile tied for third at 12 percent. Tracfone rounded out the top 5 with 5.1 percent, seeing the biggest growth of all the carriers.

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Just weeks after Motorola Co-CEO Greg Brown said the company was going to start making acquisitions and return to growth after years of lagging, it appears the mobile phone maker has purchased mobile OS maker Azingo.

The acquisition was spotted through a LinkedIn profile and the company makes an OS called Azingo Mobile 2.0, which is based on a Linux variant.

Although you have probably never heard of Azingo (I know I hadn't), the OS has a Webkit-based browser, runtime, Flash runtime and full developer tools.

The move is backed by comments by Co-CEO Sanjay Jha, who said recently that the company was looking into owning and running their own operating system: "I've always felt that owning your OS is important, provided you have an ecosystem, you have all the services and you have an ability and the scale to execute on keeping that OS at the leading edge. And I continue to believe that at some point, if we have all of those attributes, that owning our own OS will be a very important thing."

While it is unclear if Motorola will drop Android support fully for Azingo, it appears it will at least be integrated into the next update of MotoBLUR.

Pic, story via AndroidandMe:

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Market research firm Changewave has released their recent survey results today, which reveals that over half of current Verizon subscribers would trade in their phone for an Apple iPhone if it was available on the carrier.

The company polled 4000 mobile phone users.

Of those polled with Verizon subs, 19 percent said they would "very likely" purchase a Verizon iPhone, while another 34 percent would "somewhat likely" purchase the device.

For T-Mobile users, only 11 percent said they would "very likely" buy the device with 28 percent saying "somewhat likely."

The numbers were similar for Sprint, with 11 percent and 33 percent, respectively.

"The survey results show an unprecedented level of pent up demand for the iPhone among Verizon subscribers," adds the survey. "If Verizon were ever to offer the iPhone… [it would have] a profound and likely transformational impact on the industry."

Pic via Mashable:

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TouchArcade has posted a video today of a gamer playing Super Nintendo (SNES) on the Apple iPad while using the Wii-mote as a remote control.

The app, snes4iphone, costs $5.99 from the jailbroken app store, Cydia, and the ROMs for games, such as "Super Mario World," as shown in the video, have to be supplied by the gamer.

The iPad was jailbroken this week, with hundreds of apps already submitted to Cydia.

Version 7.0 of snes4iphone must be downloaded, as it allows for Wiimote support on the iPad.

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Microsoft has decided this week to take down its 4200 public and private support newsgroups, beginning the clean out on June 1st.

All users of the newsgroups will be pushed to the Microsoft Forums, where they can get support from Microsoft Answers, MSDN and TechNet.

Says the software giant: "Newsgroups run on an outdated and discontinued platform that is no longer supported, making them vulnerable to spam and other usability issues. As a result of our continuous investment in community and the rise of social media, growth in our forums has been consistently increasing since their launch."

Traffic to the newsgroups has fallen 48 percent in the last year, and the company says it will close down the least-used groups first, moving its way to the most popular ones at the end. On the other hand, the Microsoft Forums have grown by 12 percent each month, and now total 15 million visits per month.

"Moving to forums aligns the end user experience with current market trends, reduces the number of redundant support resources with centralized, searchable content, allows users to identify content contributors across forums, and makes contributions more broadly available and impactful," adds an MS spokesperson. "Forums are also moderated by Microsoft to ensure content is accurate and to encourage richer conversations."

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