While it’s easy to talk about the realm of smartphone operating systems as if there were only two competitors (Google and Apple, with the Android and iPhone systems, respectively), it’s a fair deal more complicated. In the U.S. alone, Google is only the number two competitor, while Apple is in third place, with RIM (the Blackberry OS) taking the number one spot. Yes, RIM is seeing a definite decline, but they’re still a very real player, especially overseas.

Meanwhile, that global market has multiple other competitors to keep an eye on. The biggest name here is Nokia, who grew to a position of definite dominance over the years. However, the picture has changed, and in the global scene, Google has scratched its way quite rapidly to a position of dominance.

Just last year, Google’s operating systems — including Android, but also their OMS and Tapas version, which are region-specific operating systems that bear some resemblance to the core Google OS — were at just 8.7% of the market. They had huge competitors to bring down, including Nokia (44%) and RIM (20%). Over the course of only twelve months, Google showed a 615% growth rate that brought them all the way up to 32.9% of the market. Their efforts, combined with Apple’s growth over the same time period (9% to 16%) cannibalized Nokia enough that this figure put Google in the lead.

Things are only looking up for Google over the course of the next year. The announcement of a smartphone with the Android OS that will come to under $100, even before the discounts from phone carriers, is likely to popularize the systems in less established areas; carriers are consistently lowering the price of data access plans; and both Nokia and RIM are considering using the Android OS rather than developing their own platform.