U.S. Smartphone Battle Heats Up: Which is the “Most Desired” Operating System?
According to October 2010 data from The Nielsen Company, 29.7 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers now own smartphones that run full operating systems. — The most popular smartphones are the Apple iPhone and RIM Blackberry …
Context & Ripple Effects
This Nielsen report extends the story that began with its October finding that Android had become the most popular operating system among recent U.S. smartphone buyers — a momentum signal rather than an installed-base claim. The new October 2010 numbers add the other half of the picture: only 29.7 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers own smartphones at all, and among existing owners the Apple iPhone and RIM BlackBerry are still the most popular devices.
That gap is the whole tension: Google owns the recent-purchase trend while Apple and RIM own the current fleet, and with roughly seven in ten subscribers yet to upgrade, Nielsen frames the fight as a contest over desire — which OS wins the not-yet-smartphone majority. A Royal Pingdom chart published the day before this piece showed the same race splitting differently by region, underlining that the U.S. three-way battle has no single global analogue.
First-order effects
- RIM enters the holiday season holding co-favorite status on installed devices even as Nielsen's own October data shows Android winning recent buyers — its share depends on defending upgraders, not acquiring first-time owners.
- Carriers' holiday handset lineups become the deciding channel: with 70-plus percent of subscribers still on feature phones, the iPhone-versus-Android pitch at point of sale targets a far larger pool than the existing smartphone base.
Second-order effects
- App developers and publishers sizing the U.S. market must weigh two different denominators — Apple's and RIM's larger current user bases against Android's faster acquisition rate — pushing portfolio and monetization decisions toward whichever curve they believe.
- Google's recent-buyer lead forces Apple and RIM into pricing and model-cadence responses aimed squarely at first-time smartphone shoppers rather than each other's customers.
Third-order effects
- With penetration under a third of subscribers, the U.S. market is effectively pre-deciding its default OS for the next upgrade cycle — whoever converts the feature-phone majority sets the platform gravity for apps, services, and carrier subsidies.
- If the pattern of OS-level competition outpacing device-level loyalty holds, RIM's strength as a hardware favorite becomes a depreciating asset unless its operating system wins the same desire contest Nielsen is measuring.
The trend: The U.S. mobile market is crossing from feature-phone majority to smartphone majority through a three-way OS race in which installed base (Apple, RIM) and purchase momentum (Android) are diverging until the next upgrade wave resolves them.