Measurement and information company Neilsen, released a survey today stating that nearly one out of every three smartphones (32.1 percent to be exact) sold in the U.S. are iPhones. The survey also found that 48.1 percent of smartphone owners decided to go with an Android. On the other hand in the last three months the numbers were much closer with 43 percent buying iPhone’s and 48 percent opting to go with Android.
That means that in the last three months 91 percent of the smartphone industry in the U.S. belonged to either the iPhone or the Android. Another important statistic to not is the difference in market penetration of smartphones in February of 2011 compared to February of 2012. In February of last year only 36 percent of the cell phones purchased were smartphones. Fast forward to February of 2012 and almost 50 percent (48.1 to be exact) of cell phones purchased in the U.S. were smartphones. That’s a pretty significant sign of things to come. Furthermore more than two-thirds of the mobile devices purchased in the last three months were smartphones.
So what does all these numbers mean for Apple and Google?
It means that the race for the mobile device market isn’t over by a long shot. It will be interesting to see how thing play out over the next year with Microsoft getting back into the mix with the Windows phone and RIM’s Blackberry becoming less and less significant.
Also keep in mind that Nokia will be launching their smartphone the Lumia 900 sometime later this year that they claim will be better than the iPhone, though I find that pretty hard to believe.
For now I think iPhone is in a great position to continue to grow it’s market share over the next year since it is still leading the industry by far in terms of innovation, style and of course profit.
