According to comScore MobiLens research, which covered mobile handset usage between October 2009 and January 2010, RIM owns the smartphone market, with 43% market share, up 1.7% from three months earlier. RIM was the only company to gain significantly in total handset numbers, too, up 1.4% to 7.8% share, and that is overall phone numbers, not just smartphones.

The real news, however, was Android, which gained 4.3% to own 7.1% market share. This likely came from the strong debut of the Verizon Motorola Droid, as well as multiple Motoblur Android phones from Motorola, Samsung and HTC.

Android and RIM seem to be taking OS share away from two floundering smartphone companies, Palm and Microsoft. Palm was down 2.1% and MSFT down 4% to sit at 5.7 and 15.7% share respectively.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering how many handsets are arriving on the market with Android, in some form or another. There has even been talk that the wide disparity of Android OS numbers debuting on devices, from 1.5 to 2.1, is going to fragment the market too much, to the point where Google will lose “control” over its own monster. At this point, the fragmentation has only led to customer frustration, as developers are releasing applications that can only run on the newest OS version, 2.0+, which is only available on a select few phones, including Google’s own Nexus One.

There is no doubt, though, that in the immediate future, Android will gain against Microsoft and RIM, and is even taking some share away from Apple’s iPhone, whose numbers have remained steady at 25.1% share, still astronomical numbers from a single device OS.

Are you looking to purchase an Android phone? Let us know in the comments!