With the number of smart phones and touch screen phones that get launched every month, it was quite obvious to expect a high growth rate for both these mobile segments. The recent Press Release from comScore showed numbers that were unexpected though. The paper showed that the subscribers for touch screen phone went up by 159% in the last one year while the the subscribers for smart phone grew at 63% in the US.
| ouchscreen Smartphone Adoption 3 Months Ending August 2009 vs. August 2008 Total U.S. Mobile Subscribers, Age 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens |
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| Device Type | Subscribers (000) | ||
| Aug-08 | Aug-09 | Percent Change | |
| Touchscreen | 9,219 | 23,843 | 159% |
| Smartphone | 20,735 | 33,779 | 63% |
Touch screen phones are something everybody can use and would like to posses unlike smart phones which explains the difference in the growth rate. The trend of touch screen phones was set by iPhone and clearly dominates the market with a huge share of close to 33 percent followed by LG Dare at about 9 percent while all the other top devices seem to have high competition among themselves.
| Top Touchscreen Device Families by Share of Device Users Three Months Ending August 2009 Total U.S. Mobile Subscribers, Age 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens |
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| Device Family | Share (%) of Touchscreen Device Users |
| Total Touchscreen | 100.0% |
| Apple iPhone | 32.9% |
| LG Dare | 8.7% |
| LG Voyager | 7.8% |
| Blackberry Storm | 7.0% |
| Palm Treo | 6.5% |
| Samsung Instinct | 5.0% |
| T-Mobile G1 | 3.6% |
| HTC Touch | 3.3% |
| Samsung Glyde | 2.7% |
| LG Xenon | 2.6% |
LG seems to be doing really well in the touch screen arena with three phones in the top ten list. The paper also said smart phones and touch screen both are popular with the age group under 35 with 51.4 and 57.7 percent respectively.