40% of US Mobile Users Own Smartphones

Nielsen released its July 2011 smartphone data today, and the top stat making headlines is the smartphone penetration in the US.  Currently, 40% of mobile users in the US own smart phones.  Of them, Android accounts for 40%, Apple’s iOS accounts for 28%, and RIM (Blackberry) is hanging on with 19%.

While there is a lot great info here, there are two takeaways that I think deserve additional mention.

1) We are tracking slightly behind the predictions Nielsen made back in Q1 2010.  Back then, they expected smartphone penetration to overtake feature phones by Q4 2011.  The July 2011 numbers are closer to the expected results for the end of Q1 2011.  So we are close, but growth is not keeping up with earlier predictions.

2) Windows Phone 7 still has not broken into the US Smartphone market, holding only 1% of US mobile users, even though the now deprecated Windows Mobile is holding at 7%.  This tells me that current Windows Mobile users are switching to other operating systems when they get a new phone.