comScore: Analysis of the US smartphone market in Q3 2011

Market research company comScore has just released data on the number of smartphones in the U.S. Nielsen's report states that the smartphone penetration rate in the U.S. has reached 43% of all mobile phone terminals, especially among those aged 25 to 34, the proportion has risen to 62%.

Smartphones accounted for 37.4% of all mobile phone terminals, an increase of 2.9 million units (1.24%).
In September, an average of about 650,000 non-smartphone users switched to smartphones every week.
Based on the growth rate over the past six months, it is estimated that by the end of September 2012, the penetration rate of smartphones will exceed 50%.

As shown in the figure below, the import rhythm is accelerating.

[Average number of new smartphone users per week/month]

By OS platform, Android has 39 million users, RIM has 16.5 million, Apple (iOS) has 24 million, and Microsoft has about 5 million. Non-smartphone users are 147 million. The market share (%) and number of devices installed by each OS are shown in the following figure.

[(Left) Change in market share (unit: %) / (Right) Change in cumulative number of units introduced (unit: million units)]
The increase in the number of users of each OS platform is shown in the figure below.

[Monthly user increase and decrease changes (unit: million)]

This year, while Android (grey) and iOS (blue) have continued to increase, RIM (green) has been declining since half a year ago. Microsoft (yellow) has continued to grow its users for four months, with a total increase of about 440,000 since May. Although the number of new Windows Phone users is increasing to a greater or lesser extent, the number of users is still only one-third of RIM's.

Overall, although the number of non-smartphone users is decreasing, they are still the largest group in the figure.

[Number of OS platform introduced (unit: million)]

The United States is the world's largest smartphone market, and data related to this is an indicator of the direction the industry is moving in (in terms of quantity, it may be overtaken by the Chinese market in a few months). In addition, after analyzing the data collected by major survey companies, it helps to understand the pace of change in the industry's progress. It is more useful than data related to other markets.

Note: According to Nielsen's report, the penetration rate of smartphones in the United States has reached 43% of all mobile phone terminals, especially among people aged 25 to 34, this proportion has risen to 62%.