More Young Americans Are Buying Smartphones

According to a recent comScore report, there are now more than 100 million smartphones in use in the United States. This means that nearly one in three Americans–assuming they each have a phone–are using an iPhone or an Android device.  This is a 13 percent jump from where the number stood back in October, 2011, which demonstrates the increasing demand for smartphones.

To be more specific, it’s been reported there were 101.3 million smartphones in use at the start of 2012, and to nobody’s surprise, iOS and Android were the most popular platforms, with the latter claiming 48.6 percent of the market (a 2.3% increase from October) and iOS owning 29.5 percent (a 1.4 % increase).  RIM’s BlackBerry OS continues to dwindle in share in the U.S., and fell 2 points down to 15.2 percent share.  At the same time, Microsoft’s various mobile Windows platforms have claimed 4.4 percent market share  down 1% during the same period and Nokia’s Symbian took a 1.5 percent (down 0.1 points) share.

The top five smartphone makers in the U.S. remained in the same slots for January.  However, Apple, at fourth-place was the only company that gained any market share (2%). comScore’s report states that 234 million Americans aged 13 and older used mobile phones in the three month period ending in January.

We’ve all heard that smartphone penetration in the United States has been hovering around 50% for awhile now. Recently though, Nielsen came out with an study about the buying habits of consumers 18-34 years old.  Eight out of 10 of these young consumers buy smartphones as their first or their new mobile phone. In other words, when this age group is buying a new mobile device, they’re 80% likely to make it a smartphone.   Not far behind is consumers aged 35-44, with 74% of new mobile phone device purchases being smartphones, as well.

While overall smartphone penetration stood at 48 percent in January, those in the 25-34 age group showed the greatest proportion of smartphone ownership, with 66 percent saying they had one. In the same age group, 8 of 10 of those that had gotten a new device in the last three months chose a smartphone. Among those who chose a device in the last three months, more than half of those under 65 had chosen a smartphone.

Should this be a cause for concern for the text message?  Tatango posted an article in September showing that text messaging still trumps all other activities such as email, social networking, internet browsing.

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Tagged as: mobile insights, mobile marketing, mobile trends, Smart phones