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90 Million Americans Now Own a Smartphone

comScore reported key trends in the U.S. mobile phone industry during the three month average period ending October 2011. The market study surveyed more than 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers. The significant take-away for me was that the Apple iPhone high-growth upside seems to have stalled in America.

Where the platform ecosystem market share gains end in 2011 we likely be a key market indicator for the 2012 outlook. That being said, most industry analysts still predict a continuation of the Google Android upside, at this point in time.

For the three-month average period ending in October, 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices.

Device manufacturer Samsung ranked as the top OEM with 25.5 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers, followed by LG with 20.6 percent share and Motorola with 13.6 percent share. Apple strengthened its position at #4 with 10.8 percent share of mobile subscribers (up just 1.3 percentage points), while RIM rounded out the top five with 6.6 percent share.

90 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in October, up 10 percent from the preceding three month period.

Google Android ranked as the top smartphone platform with 46.3 percent market share, up 4.4 percentage points from the prior three-month period. Apple maintained its #2 position, growing just 1.0 percentage point to 28.1 percent of the smartphone market. RIM ranked third with 17.2 percent share, followed by Microsoft (5.4 percent) and Symbian (1.6 percent).

In October, 71.8 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device, up 1.8 percentage points. Browsers were used by 44.0 percent of subscribers (up 2.9 percentage points), while downloaded applications were used by 43.8 percent (up 3.2 percentage points).

Accessing of social networking sites or blogs increased 2.2 percentage points to 32.3 percent of mobile subscribers. Game-playing was done by 29.2 percent of the mobile audience (up 1.4 percentage points), while 21.2 percent listened to music on their phones (up 0.9 percentage points).

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