US Smartphone Statistics – Q1 2011 Overview

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With Q1 2011 now past us, here’s a quick review of the stats coming out.  Which Smartphone is faring how, who’s using which one and how, and so on.
Since there are so many numbers to digest, I’ve broken this up into a 2 part series with the first part focusing exclusively on Smartphone sales and performance, while the second will focus on Smartphone usage and its impact on different industries.

For starters, Smartphones made up 54% of all mobile phone sales in the US. According to last year’s predictions, Smartphones capturing 50% of overall mobile sales was supposed to happen by the end of 2011. This is HUGE! Smartphones are penetrating the market fast and deep. Might we soon see the day when feature phones no longer exist?

As for individual platforms, here’s a quick sales report card for the 3 major Smartphone platforms – iPhone, Android and Blackberry. Apple’s iPhone sales went up from 19% in Q4 2010 to 28% in Q1 2011 (thanks mostly to the Verizon iPhone) and Android sales were at 50% of the market share, dropping from 53%. Verizon alone sold 2.2 million iPhones since February, and over 260,000 HTC Android phones in a 2 week period. Very impressive! As for Blackberry, Research In Motion (RIM) saw ‘sluggish Blackberry sales’ in Q1 2011, with their shares dropping 11% as of late last week. Yikes.

To delve a little deeper, in Q1 2010, Apple shipped 8.7 million iPhones, while in Q1 2011 they shipped 18.7 million iPhones – a 115% increase in one year. In Q1 2011 the United States had the highest Smartphone shipments estimated in any single country, with North America seeing an 85% growth from Q1 2010 to Q1 2011 in total Smartphone shipments.  The current base of Smartphone owners in the US is broken down into 37% with an Android device, 27% with an iPhone, 22% with a Blackberry, and 10% with a Windows phone.

Neilsen does monthly consumer surveys of US mobile phone users to gauge consumer reactions to these different Smartphones. They discovered that during the months of July – September, 2010, of the consumers who were getting a new Smartphone, 33% wanted an Apple iPhone, 26% wanted an Android phone and 13% wanted a Blackberry device. The same survey conducted between January and March 2011 revealed that 31% wanted an Android, 30% wanted an iPhone and 11% wanted a Blackberry. Android is slowly creeping up the consumer ‘cool index’, beyond the iPhone. It will do us well to take these statistics into account when building mobile apps (think cross-smartphone solutions). All three devices, especially Android and iPhone, continue to remain at the top of the Smartphone market and consumer interest levels.

So what is your take-away?  Can organizations of any kind ignore the growth of Smartphones any longer?  They are quickly becoming a ‘can’t live without’ commodity in consumers’ everyday lives.   Nonprofits in particular must stay at the forefront of this growth – to remain relevant to supporters and ensure their mission and brand remain intact. What is your organization doing to capture and engage consumers with mobile? Please share your ideas and insights with us!

Look out for the next in this series which talks about statistics from a Google webinar – ‘The Mobile Movement – Understanding Smartphone Users’ and how they relate to nonprofits.

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