On Thursday, venerable research and analytics giant Nielsen reported some impressive finds about the U.S. smartphone market.
We all knew it was growing… but it’s unlikely we were cognizant of just how much and how fast that growth was transpiring.
The new report by Nielsen indicates that close to half of all the mobile phones purchased in the United States today are, indeed, smartphones. With feature phones dramatically losing their luster, smartphone penetration has spike 38 percent over last year when just 36 percent of mobile subscribers were smartphone owners.
This growth is driven by increasing smartphone adoption, as more than two-thirds of those who acquired a new mobile device in the last three months chose a smartphone over a feature phone.
“Overall,” the Nielsenwire reads, “Android continues to lead the smartphone market in the U.S., with 48 percent of smartphone owners saying they owned an Android OS device. Nearly a third (32.1%) of smartphone users have an Apple iPhone, and Blackberry owners represented another 11.6 percent of the smartphone market.”
Android and iOS are much closer, however, in terms of recent smartphone purchases.
Nielsen finds that among recent acquirers who got their smartphone within the last three months, 48 percent of those surveyed in February said they chose an Android and 43 percent bought an iPhone.
To check out the report, click here.
