In the month of January, Microsoft's Bing search engine claimed 13.1 percent of the market, taking a full percentage point away from Google, which dropped from 66.6 percent in December to a still dominant 65.6 percent, according to data from comScore. Bing's 1.1 percent ascent is the search engine's biggest single-month gain since it debuted in June 2009.

To say it's been a good quarter for Google's Android platform is an understatement. Back in August 2010, Android trailed behind Apple in smartphone market share by 4.6 percentage points. But for the 3 month average ending November 2010, Android sits on top of Apple with a 26 percent share of the market, compared to Apple's 25 percent share, according to new data by comScore.

"After several months of strong growth, Google Android captured the #2 ranking among smartphone platforms in November with 26.0 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers. Apple accounted for 25.0 percent of smartphone subscribers (up 0.8 percentage points), followed by Microsoft with 9.0 percent and Palm with 3.9 percent.," comScore notes.

Android posted the biggest point change of them all, and by a wide margin. While Google moved up 6.4 percentage points, Apple was the only other company to post a gain, and by less than 1 percentage point.

More stats here.

Here's some good news for e-tailers looking to get back in black. According to market research firm comScore, eCommerce for holiday season to date has totaled $9.01 billion, a 13 percent increase over the same time period one year ago.

"The beginning of the online holiday shopping season has gotten off to an extremely positive start, outperforming our earlier expectations," said comScore chairman, Gian Fulgoni. "Despite continued high unemployment rates and other economic concerns, consumers seem to be more willing to open up their wallets this holiday season than last. While this early spending surge reflects, in part, heavy promotional activity on the part of retailers occurring earlier this season, it is nevertheless a very encouraging sign."

It's also indicative of more spending to come, comScore suggests. The analytics firm predicts holiday spending for the November-to-December period to hit $32.4 billion, an 11 percent gain over last year's numbers. Helping the cause are the free shipping promotions, such as those being offered by Walmart and Best Buy. Some 77 percent of respondents indicated that free shipping is either 'very important' or 'somewhat important' to their purchasing decision.

Get the full scoop here.