Top 10 Touchscreen Devices: iPhone Drives 159% Growth

The number of touchscreen mobile-phone users in the US has grown 159% during the past year - to 23.8 million in August 2009 - and has substantially outpaced the already-strong 63% growth of smartphone use, according to a study of touchscreen mobile phone adoption in the US by comScore, Inc.

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Top 10 Touchscreen Device Families

Not surprisingly, the Apple (AAPL) iPhone ranks as the top touchscreen device family with 32.9% of touchscreen device users ages 13+, nearly four times larger than the market share of the next largest device family, the LG (LPL) Dare (8.7%).

LG Voyager ranks #3 with 7.8% of the market, followed by the Blackberry (RIMM) Storm (7.0%) and Palm (PALM) Treo (6.5%).

Touchscreen Users Younger

Smartphones in general and touchscreen devices specifically tend to be more popular among younger users, comScore said. While 38.8% of all mobile subscribers (age 13+) are under age 35, 51.4% of smartphone users are in this age cohort, as are 57.7% of touchscreen device users.

The analysis found that a a significant 20.6% of touchscreen users are in the narrow age range of 18-24. Less than 5% of smartphone and touchscreen device users are ages 65+, compared with 13% of the total US mobile audience.

“Touchscreen phones have quickly gained adoption as new devices have flooded the mobile marketplace,” said Mark Donovan, comScore SVP of mobile. “This is a trend that should continue to pick up as additional touchscreen devices, many of them running the Android operating system, arrive in the market before the holiday shopping season.”

Donovan expects the market to grow increasingly competitive in months to come.

A recent study on smartphone satisfaction from CFI Group found the iPhone to be the undisputed leader in terms of customer satisfaction with a smartphone device, while smartphone users gave Verizon’s service the highest marks.

Comments

[JamesApple:]

With the exception of the iPhone, none of these phones are general purpose that can do anything the customer wants. Rim blackberry for example can only do some email and texting!! Unlike the 100000 iPhone apps from the App Store. I think it's just Apple iPhone creating and expanding a general purpose mobile smartphone market, the rest are just tagging along hoping to get a piece of the Apple market which is 100% controlled by Apple's App Store.

Nov 04 04:59 PM

[JamesApple:]

With all due respect, I wish to suggest the iPhone to be renamed the GeneralPhone, or simply GP, because that's what it really is.

Nov 04 06:03 PM

[Davis Gentry:]

JamesApple has no idea what a Blackberry does. I looked at new smartphones this year and went with the Blackberry Bold because it is a better platform than the iPhone is. I run multiple apps simultaneously, have full voice control, a physical keyboard, thousands of apps available at a number of retailers and RIM itself, full Google Maps using the onboard GPS, Yahoo Search with voice control, etc, etc. And I'm one of the thousands of people who have been using smartphones for almost a decade. I've used Blackberries, Windows Mobile devices (Motorola and HTC), and Palm devices. Apple has come out with a great offering, but it is not the best available for my purposes. They have not revolutionized anything - just built on years of development from many companies. The shakeup the iPhone generated has been great, though. Typed, btw, on my MacBook Pro.

Davis Gentry


On Nov 04 04:59 PM JamesApple wrote:

> With the exception of the iPhone, none of these phones are general
> purpose that can do anything the customer wants. Rim blackberry for
> example can only do some email and texting!! Unlike the 100000 iPhone
> apps from the App Store. I think it's just Apple iPhone creating
> and expanding a general purpose mobile smartphone market, the rest
> are just tagging along hoping to get a piece of the Apple market
> which is 100% controlled by Apple's App Store.

Nov 04 06:03 PM

[Aussie Machead:]

I realised yesterday how far the iPhone has taken us into new territory. My partner is a dinosaur and has a Motorola for which we got a 3G SIM card to replace the old SIM. I activated it with the Telco and they didn't remind me to transfer data first and had of course forgotten to transfer his minimalist addressbook to the phone. Also as a dinosaur he would not want the huge directory of addresses from my Mac Address Book. So step two try and get the data from his old SIM card into his phone.... Scrolling through screen upon screen I couldn't find where to transfer his old SIM info.. Also when I did try to put the old card back it wouldn't accept the SIM password. So I went through the laborious process of re-entering the individual phone nos of the people I knew he would want. What a process and how I realised how much I hate the numeric keypad entry method.. This is NOT simple.. Added to my disdain was how FILTHY the inside of the phone was when I had to remove the battery to get to the SIM card. YUK.. I know someone who might find a brand new iPhone in his Christmas stocking.. The experience with an iPhone is JUST so different and lets face it most of the other smart phones are just tinsle on an artificial Christmas Tree but the iPhone is a live and growing Apple Tree..

Nov 04 06:06 PM

[JamesApple:]

I was working inside the Rim HQ office building when the first blackberry bold was born. I got blackberry issued to me by Rim. There are no blackberry devices I have not dealt with.

Bold users have a very limited set of job functions hardwired into their bolds and BES user roles and access authorities requiring days of BES admin turnaround time to even make the tiniest of user role and access changes (often with mistakes) and here he is boasting this grossely limited bold for doing his work!!

Why is he using a Mac computer?

Nov 04 06:54 PM

[JamesApple:]

Bold is not a touchscreen, it is a coward hiding behind the big plastic QWERTY.

Nov 04 07:03 PM

[Wireless Wiz:]

James wants to show his hatred towrads RIM with every post - just ignore him.

I find it fascinating that the Storm still got 7% of the touchscreen market despite having a terrible first iteration of the device. The second one is much improved so that number should only increase. As a side note the RIM buyback announcement shows how smart mgmt is. Having that in place if shares continue to fall because of the negative sentiment around the Droid launch is a savvy move.

Nov 05 10:17 AM

[mollytjm:]

Blackberries continue to do well because a lot of industries give them to staff who have no choice in the matter. As younger people enter the workforce, this will change. the iPhone is really a pocket computer as intuitive as a Mac. Competition is good for the marketplace, but Apple will be here in 2020 and i'm not sure about some of the other companies. Some just coasted for too long and now they have to try and catch up. But Apple innovates better and faster than anyone, so it's going to be very interesting.
long APPL

Nov 05 10:38 AM

[User 507290:]

Now it makes sense, JamesApple used to work for RIM and got canned.

Nov 07 05:05 PM

[NoBody78:]

I think the rumored Apple tablet will be on this list next year.

Nov 23 04:12 PM