Port Washington, N.Y.
– Cellphones with QWERTY keyboards or touchscreens increased their share of the
retail cellphone market in last year’s fourth quarter, when all of the top 10
phones in retail unit volume came with one or both features, an NPD Group
consumer survey found.
In the quarter, 46
percent of phones sold had QWERTY keyboards, up from a year-ago 31 percent, and
34 percent came with touchscreens, up from the year-ago 20 percent, NPD said.
NPD also found
that Apple, LG and RIM lost unit share in the quarter as Motorola’s Droid, even
though it was launched in the middle of the quarter, became the fifth
most-purchased consumer mobile phone in the U.S. It was also the only
smartphone in the top five to feature both a touchscreen and hard QWERTY
keyboard.
“Regardless of
whether they opt for a data plan, consumers want richer user interface
options,” said Ross Rubin, industry analysis executive director. “The humble [dialing] keypad is losing in the
race to optimize a handset’s surface.”
The top 10 phones
by unit volume at the retail level were:
- RIM BlackBerry
Curve (all 83XX models) - LG enV3
- Apple iPhone
3GS (both models) - Apple iPhone 3G
- Motorola Droid
- LG enV Touch
- RIM Blackberry
Tour - Samsung
Intensity - Samsung
Solstice - Samsung
Impression
The NPD Group
bases its statistics on more than 150,000 completed online consumer research
surveys each month. Sales figures do not include corporate/enterprise mobile
phone sales.
