comScore: Smartphone Penetration Hits 51%
Various measurement services have been dancing on both sides of this psychological tipping point for the smartphone market for the past year,
but this week comScore joins the chorus of bean counters who say that a majority of adult cell phone subscribers in the U.S. are now working with smartphones.
Nielsen marked the tipping occurring back in March numbers. Pew in September still had the overall penetration rate at 45%. Still, everyone seems to agree that key youth and affluent demographics passed the halfway mark a while ago. Your smartphone mileage may vary according to target.
Whatever we may think of the fragmentation that resulted from Google’s open platform strategy with Android, it surely has paid off in raw platform reach, complex as that may be. On a worldwide basis, Android owns over 75% of the market in recently purchased smartphones. According to comScore, the U.S. picture is less lopsided. Google has a 52.5% share as of September, compared to Apple’s 34.3%. RIM’s nosedive continues predictably with a 8.4% share (-2.3 point in a quarter). And Microsoft’s costly charge into the mobile market continues to underwhelm, with a 3.6% share.
As the politicos like to say about the latest polls, it is the internals that really count. Regardless of smartphone penetration, key mobile activities are well past the majority mark. Now more than three-quarters of Americans use SMS (75.5%), 54% use apps and 52% use the mobile browser. Considering that cell phone penetration now is at 234 million Americans, those are mighty numbers indeed. More specific mobile activities such as social networking (39%) and game playing (34.4%) now occupy more than a third of users.
Recent Mobile Marketing Daily Articles
-
B&N Nook: Let's Try That Again May 6, 8:17 a.m.
Barnes & Noble is trying to come at the tablet market yet again this week with ... -
Robert Scoble Doesn't Want To Take His Google Glass Device Off...Ever April 29, 9:05 a.m.
Longtime industry analyst Robert Scoble has been giving his readers some unique insight and perspective on ... -
Smartphone Shipments Pass The Halfway Milestone April 26, 9:20 a.m.
While smartphone shipments and ownership in the U.S. achieved a majority penetration a while ago, the ... -
Twitter Does Stand-Up In New Comedy Central Project April 24, 9:08 a.m.
Mel Brooks on Twitter? The fabled 2000-year-old man will in fact get his own handle and ... -
Summly Built Into Updated Yahoo App April 23, 12:50 p.m.
Yahoo made a splash last month when it acquired Summly, the startup launched by U.K.-based 17-year-old ... -
ACLU Joins The Fight Against Android Fragmentation? April 22, 9 a.m.
Developers frustrated by the fragmented Android hardware terrain got an unlikely ally last week in the ... -
LinkedIn Launches Major Mobile App Upgrade, Leads With Content April 18, 9 a.m.
While Facebook and Twitter have been following the majority of their users as they migrate to ... -
Google Adds Quick Links, Quick Views To Mobile Search Results April 17, 8:21 a.m.
In an effort to make mobile search results for users closer to the information they seek, ... -
Facebook Home Features Coming To iOS April 17, 8:21 a.m.
Facebook Home may not be coming to iOS, but some features of the software overlay for ... -
LinkedIn Buys Pulse For $90 Million April 12, 2:10 p.m.
LinkedIn on Thursday confirmed that it had acquired newsreader app Pulse as it seeks to offer more content ...
Be the first to comment on "comScore: Smartphone Penetration Hits 51% "
Leave a Comment