Half mobile users in U.S own smartphones

The smartphone market has hit a mid-point of its journey to gain a market share of 100% smartphones users in the U.S. Although you might assume that the 50% mark was already hit and that its actually slow, a news report from research company Nielsen shows that up to February, 49.7% of U.S mobile phone users owned smartphones. Again, while that might not be a shocking figure, this one should be as the percentage of smartphone users last year was 13.7% of all mobile users; a full 36% less.

Nielsen also revealed that over the past 3 months, 66% of new phone purchasers opted for a smartphone over feature phones. The trend of mobile phone purchases is skewing upwards at a dramatically steep incline and is indeed impressive. With regards to the choice of device based on OS that was made over the past 3 months, 48% chose a device with an Android OS, 43% went with an iOS based device with 5% opting for BlackBerry and 4% for other OS’. The figures are similar with the overall breakdown for smartphones in U.S except that the iPhone has grown more popular among new smartphone owners while RIM’s BlackBerry has declined. Besides that, Android has maintained its market share of 48%.