US smartphone penetration soars in Q4 2010

The number of smartphone users in the US rose 60% in the three months to the end of December 2010, according to comScore.

In the US, around 63.2 million people now own a smartphone, compared with 38.7 million in the final three months of 2009.

Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android were the only two platforms to achieve growth in Q4 2010, according to ClickZ.

Market leader RIM (which supports Blackberry devices) experienced a substantial decline during the three month period, down 5.7 percentage points. And despite the launch of the Windows Phone 7 operating system in October, Microsoft also lost market share – down 1.5 percentage points.

Meanwhile, Google enjoyed growth of 7.3 percentage points, overtaking Apple with a 29% overall market share.

comScore’s latest data comes as International Data Corp claims that smartphones outsold PCs for the first time in Q4 2010. Over 100 million smartphones were sold globally during the period, up 87% year on year.

Read the full ClickZ article here.