Survey: Cellphone Music, Web Access Rising Along With Smartphone Use

Joseph Palenchar -- TWICE, 3/10/2010

Reston, Va. - More people owned smartphones, listened to cellphone-stored music, and used their phone to access a social-networking site during the three months ending in January compared with the previous three months, a ComScore consumer survey found.

  The survey also found that Research In Motion (RIM) increased its leading share of smartphone users during the period, although Google's share of users rose the most. Apple's share was almost flat.

 The online survey of people ages 13 and older also found that Motorola leads in the number of consumers using its handsets, although that lead slipped sequentially during the latest three-month period.

  For its monthly online surveys, ComScore polls more than 30,000 consumers, with a new sample surveyed every month. The company's report, based on a three-month average, includes employer-issued phones as long as the phone was the respondent's primary phone.  For the latest three-month period, ComScore determined that 234 million Americans ages 13 and older were cellphone subscribers and that 22.9 percent of them used a Motorola phone (down 1.2 percentage points). LG ranked second in share of users at 21.7 percent (down 0.3 points), followed by Samsung with 21.1 percent (up 0.1 points), Nokia with 9.1 percent (down 0.2 points) and RIM with 7.8 percent (up 1.4 points). The relative brand ranks did not differ from the previous quarter's ranks.

 In another finding based on the surveys, ComScore determined an average 42.7 million people (or 18 percent of total cellphone subscribers) used a smartphone during the three-month period, up 18 percent from the previous three months. RIM extended its smartphone-share lead to 43 percent of all smartphone users, up 1.7 percentage points from the previous quarter. Apple ranked second with 25.1 percent share (up 0.3 percentage points), followed by Microsoft with 15.7 percent share (down 4 percentage points), Google with 7.1 percent (up 4.3 percentage points), and Palm with 5.7 percent (down 2.1 percent).

 On average during the latest three-month period, 12.8 percent of phone users listened to cellphone-stored music (up 1.2 percentage points sequentially), 17.1 percent accessed a social-network site or blog (up 3.3 points), 19.8 percent used a downloaded app (up 1.5 points), 21.7 percent played cellphone-stored games (up 0.4 points), 28.6 percent used the phone's browser (up 1.8 points), and 63.5 percent sent a text message (up 1.5 points).