The year 2012 saw smartphones taking over the United States’ market. Market Research firm – The Nielsen Group have offered an entire round-up of some of 2012’s biggest statistical stories in the mobile and digital arena. Nielsen provided data that showed that the percentage of smartphone users grew from 47.8 percent in December 2011, to 50.4 percent in March 2012. The figure became even more staggering when the percentage jumped to 56 percent by the third quarter of 2012.
When it comes to smartphones, the first two names that obviously come to ones mind are Apple and Google. Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android have been ruling the smartphone market. Both of these devices combined enjoy an 87 percent market share in the United States smartphone operating systems. Android has a 52 percent market share, while Apple’s iOS (only for Apple products) enjoys a decent 35 percent of the market share.
The application market shows an interesting study. The number one iPhone app in 2012 was ‘maps’ with a unique user base of 32.4 million users. With Apple changing its maps (from Google maps to their own) in the new version of iOS (that launched in September), users began a backlash because of the unfriendly nature of Apple’s new map app.
The top two apps for Apple were Facebook and YouTube while the top two apps for Google’s Android were Gmail and Google search. Nielsen’s year-end report is up on Nielsen’s blog. Google and Facebook feature pretty prominently in the entire report.
