New smartphone owners are choosing phones running Google's Android OS. Photo: AFP
Smartphones running Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry accounted for 7.1 percent and 4.8 percent of Americans swapping from a feature phone to a smartphone respectively.
Close to half (47.5 percent) of all feature phone owners in the US who purchased a new device in April made the jump to a smartphone, up from 38.0 percent from the year before.
“The growing number of smartphones available to consumers, accompanied by the decrease in price points and surge in mobile media content, have made smartphone ownership possible and desirable for many more Americans,” said Mark Donovan, comScore SVP of Mobile. “Within the year, we expect to see smartphone owners become the mobile majority, a milestone that represents not only the evolution of the mobile landscape but highlights the enormous potential for marketers as these powerful, ubiquitous devices open new opportunities to reach a growing audience of consumers.”
Earlier this year market analyst Nielsen reported that smartphone ownership had eclipsed mobile phone ownership in the US (comprising 54.9 percent of all US mobile subscribers as of June 2012).
Despite the trend towards smartphone ownership in developed countries including the US, the UK, Canada and Australia, market researcher IDC forecast that “feature phones will still comprise 61.6% of the total mobile phone market this year” in a report published in June.