For the three months ending in May 2013, Samsung Electronics closed the market share gap slightly between itself and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) in the U.S. market. Apple’s share of smartphone sales rose from 38.9% to 39.2%, while Samsung’s share rose from 21.3% to 23%.

Samsung’s move up the market share ladder partially reduces the 4% gain that Apple managed in the February report from comScore Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) and closes the gap between the two from 17.6 points in Apple’s favor to 16.2.

Of the remaining three companies in the top five, all lost market share in the May period. HTC’s share dropped from 9.3% to 8.7%, Motorola (now part of Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG)) fell from 8.4% to 7.8%, and LG Electronics dropped from 6.8% to 6.7%. If there’s any good news for the also-rans, each cut its losses in half from the February period.

Apple’s share of the operating system (platform) market grew by just 0.3% while share for Google’s Android platform rose by 0.7%. Android claims 52.4% of the U.S. platform market, but up from nearly 51.7% in the three months ended in February. BlackBerry (NASDAQ: BBRY) and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) both saw their shares of the platform market drop. BlackBerry fell from 5.4% to 4.8% and Microsoft fell from 3.2% to 3%. Symbian has managed to hold on to 0.4% of the market, but that will dwindle to zero now that the platform has been killed.

The short version of this story is that Google managed to regain some momentum in the platform market, and Samsung eked out a gain in smartphone production — both at the expense of Apple. Total smartphone penetration grew by 6% in the U.S. during the three months ending in May according to the comScore, and Samsung grabben nearly a third of that total.

One has to wonder how long BlackBerry can hold on, given its declining market share and its miserable sales and earnings results.

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