Wednesday, 7 March 2012

100 Million Americans Now Own Smartphones [STUDY]

For the first time, more than 100 million Americans have smartphones, according to a report by research firm comScore MobileLens.

The smartphone category exceeded that figure in January, the report said, estimating that the exact number was 101.3 million, a 13% jump since October. Despite that milestone, smartphones are still in the majority.

About 234 million Americans over the age of 13 used cellphones in January, meaning that the penetration for smartphones in the U.S. is around 43.3%.

As has been the current trend, both Google and Apple’s share of the smartphone market grew at RIM’s expense. Google’s Android platform now claims 48.6% of the market and Apple’s iOS has 29.5%, a jump of 2.3% and 1.3%, respectively, over October. RIM’s share is now 15.2%, a 2% drop. Microsoft’s share also fell 1% to 4.4%.

The report also found that texting is still the most popular mobile activity. Some 74.6% of cellphone owners texted in January. The next most popular activity was using a downloaded app (48.6%) and a browser (48.5%.)

ComScore’s figures, which are based on a survey of 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers, are at odds with a recent report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. That report showed that smartphone owners actually outnumbered basic phone owners 46% to 41%. (The other 13% didn’t have a cellphone.)

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Franckreporter

Source: Mashable

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