It seems that there are always new smartphones being released to the public by the various manufacturers, and new research has found that during Q2 in the US Android’s share has grown to 51.8 percent, while the iPhone sits on 34.3 percent.

According to InformationWeek the latest data from Nielsen showed that the number of smartphone buyers continued to rise in the US during the second quarter of this year. The total penetration of smartphones in the US has now reached 54.9 percent, and two-thirds of all new mobile phones purchased during the period were smartphones over feature handsets.

Google’s Android platform now enjoys the largest slice of the US smartphone market with 51.8 percent by the end of June, while the iPhone followed on 34.3 percent. Troubled BlackBerry maker RIM holds 8.1 percent, and other platforms made up the remaining 5.9 percent.

The figures make up the total of all devices that were actively being used at the end of Q2, and when you look what US consumers have bought during the same quarter alone, you start to see a different picture. Nielsen’s figures show that 54.6 percent of all smartphone purchases that were made between March and June were Android hardware, with Apple on 36.3 percent and RIM with 4 percent, and others accounted for 5 percent.

This shows that the smartphone buying public are continuing to move away from the BlackBerry platform, as well as Palm and Nokia’s old Symbian offering. The top two platforms now account for 91 percent of the smartphone market in the US, and rival companies are going to have a tough task to break this dominance apart.

When it comes to individual manufacturers Apple still has control of the market with HTC and Samsung are neck-and-neck for second place. Apple has 34 percent of the US market and is helped as it is the only company that provides iOS devices, while the competition offers Android and Windows Phone hardware.

Samsung is currently sitting at number two in the US market with a combined share of 17.5 percent when looking at Android and Windows Phone, with 17 percent of this coming from the Android platform. HTC has 17.4 percent of the market with Android taking 14 percent, Windows Mobile 2.9 percent, and Windows Phone taking 0.5 percent.

HTC has six times as many legacy Windows Mobile handsets compared to the newer Windows Phone smartphones, which is not good news for Microsoft. Motorola has 11 percent of the US smartphone market that comes from entirely Android devices, and beats RIM that sits on 9 percent.

Do any of these figures surprise you?