Half Of US Mobile Subscribers Have A Smartphone

by Jennifer Johnson — Friday, March 30, 2012, 03:16 PM EDT

According to new data from Nielsen, half of all mobile phone subscribers in the United States have a smartphone. Nielsen's data shows a significant growth in smartphone adoption over the past few years. Approximately one year ago, smartphone penetration was found to be at 36 percent. Recent data from Nielsen that was compiled through February 2012 suggests that smartphones now account for 49.7 percent of all mobile phones.

In addition to tracking overall smartphone market share, Nielsen also tracked mobile platforms. Over the past three months, Android has been the most popular platform, holding 48 percent of the market. iOS isn't far behind Android with 43 percent. BlackBerry held 5 percent and "other" operating systems had 3 percent of the market share.

If you consider all smartphone owners and not just recent buyers, you'll find that Android holds 48 percent of the market share but iOS has 32.1 percent. BlackBerry still has a footing among all smartphone owners with 11.6 percent of the total smartphone market. Other platforms have 8 percent of the total smartphone market.

Tags: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/

Jennifer Johnson

Jennifer grew up around technology. From an early age, she was curious about all things related to computers. As a child, Jennifer remembers spending nights with her dad programming in BASIC and taking apart hard drives to see what was inside. In high school, she wrote her senior term paper on her experiences with building custom computers.

Jennifer graduated from the Jeffrey S. Raikes School of Computer Science and Management at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. After college, she began writing full-time for various PC and technology magazines. Later, she transitioned to the Web. In these roles, Jennifer has covered a variety of topics including laptops, desktops, smartphones, cameras, tablets, and various consumer electronics devices. When she's not playing with or writing about the latest gadget, Jennifer loves to spend time with her family, capture memories with her camera, and scrapbook.

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