By Gurmukh Singh

New York, March 4 (IANS) Apple, Google, Research In Motion (RIM) are neck and neck in the cut-throat smart phone market in the US, according to a Nielsen survey Thursday.

While Apple and Google have their own individual operating systems to run their respective smart phones, Google's Android operating system (OS) supports the rest of the competition.

"When it comes to consumer market share by operating system, Android (29 percent ) appears to be pulling ahead of RIM Blackberry (27 percent) and Apple iOS (27 percent),'' Nielsen said in its survey.

But the analysis shows "RIM and Apple to be the winners compared to other device makers since they are the only ones creating and selling smart phones with their respective operating systems.''

According to the survey, HTC follows with 12 percent of consumer smartphone owners having an HTC Android device and 7 percent owning an HTC device running a Microsoft OS.

Only 10 percent of consumer smart phone owners had a Motorola Android device and one percent owned a Motorola device running a Microsoft OS, the survey said.

Android is reportedly gaining at the cost of Nokia's Symbian operating system which runs about 10 per cent of the smart phones.

Since its Symbian operating system has failed to compete with Android and the iPhone OS, Nokia has entered into a tie-up with Microsoft to use its Windows Phone 7 in its smart phones.

The Windows operating system may help Nokia ward off threats to its fast-eroding number one position in the global smart phone market.

According to a report released by tech research company IDC in January, Nokia remained the No. 1 mobile phone seller in the last quarter, shipping 123.7 million units even though its sales declined 2.4 percent since last year.