Android Grabs 43% of US Market in Q3 2011, Nielsen Says

Google's mobile operating system managed to grab 43 percent of the smartphone market in the United States, a recent report from Nielsen shows.

The company has conducted a survey among mobile phone users in the United States, and learned that more and more people chose smartphones over feature phones, and that most of smartphone users own devices running under Android at the moment.

According to the company, 43 percent of all US mobile phone subscribers have had a smartphone in the third quarter of the ongoing year, most of them being young users.

“Nielsen’s third quarter survey of mobile users reveals that while only 43 percent of all US mobile phone subscribers own a smartphone, a mobile phone with a powerful operating system, the vast majority of those under the age of 44 now have smartphones,” the research firm notes.

“In fact, 62 percent of mobile adults aged 25-34 report owning smartphones. And among those 18-24 and 35-44 years old the smartphone penetration rate is hovering near 54 percent.”

The said report from Nielsen also shows that 40 percent of 12-17 year-old teens and 40 percent of 45-54 year-olds have a smartphone.

This shows a slightly lower penetration level of smartphones in the area, though more and more users in this segments lose basic feature phones for more powerful handsets running under mobile Oses.

“After younger adults, the segment with the second fastest-growing smartphone penetration rate is those aged 55-64. Smartphone penetration among this older group is only 30 percent, but it jumped 5 percent this quarter,” Nielsen notes.

The company also shows that Apple is currently the leading smartphone maker in the United States, with 28 percent of smartphone consumers owning an iPhone at the moment.

Some of the latest reports on the matter also showed that HTC managed to sell the largest number of smartphones in the US during the third quarter of the year, and that Samsung was the top selling smartphone maker all around the world.