New comScore Report Shows US Smartphone Ownership Soaring

Smartphone ownership in the United States is surging. That’s according to fresh data published today from the comScore MobiLens service.

The report points to key trends in the US mobile phone industry during the three month average period ending February 2011.

For the three month average period ending in February, 234 million Americans ages 13 and older used mobile devices.

Based on comScore’s survey of more than 30,000 US mobile subscribers, estimates now place US smartphone ownership at 69.5 million, a substantial 13% spike from the preceding three-month period.

In the race for smartphone supremacy, Google’s Android grew 7.0 percentage points since November, strengthening its #1 position with 33.0 percent market share.

RIM, meanwhile, finished second with 28.9 percent market share. Apple placed third (25.2 percent), Microsoft fourth (7.7 percent), and Palm (2.8 percent) rounded out the top five.

With regard to mobile content usage, 68.8 percent of US mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device in February 2011. Browsers were used by 38.4 percent of subscribers (up 3.1 percentage points), and downloaded mobile apps were used by 36.6 percent of the mobile audience (up 3.2 percentage points).

Similar noteworthy spikes were observed in the usage of social networking and mobile gaming.

Accessing of social networking sites or blogs increased 3.3 percentage points, representing 26.8 percent of mobile subscribers. Playing games represented 24.6 percent of the mobile audience, while listening to music represented 17.5 percent.

To read the full report from comScore, click here.