50% Of US Mobile Users To Shift To SmartPhones by 2013

According to Nielsen, by 2011, US smartphone users will catch and surpass feature phone users. What this means that around 50% of the currently mobile subscribers would shift to smartphones .Currently 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 share of smartphones as a proportion of overall device sales has increased to 29% for phone purchasers in the last six months and 45%.based on CTIA's numbers that there are 292.8 million mobile subscribers in June 2010 which is an increase of  around 100 million subscribers    which US had around 5 years ago .( 20% Growth rate in the last 5 years)

Based on Nielsen's estimate, 50% of mobile subscribers will be smartphone users. That works out to 145.8 million total smartphone users by 2011.  Currently US wireless Penetration is  93% ( see data here) which us a  27%  rise in the last 5 years( 2005)

The most popular smartphones are the Apple iPhone and RIM Blackberry, with 27 percent of smartphone market share in the U.S. Twenty-two percent of smartphone owners have devices with the Android operating system.

Smart Phone Demographics :Slightly more males than females are getting smartphones (53% versus 47%) which is what we would expect for technical early adopter products. In terms of demographics, Hispanic Americans and Asians are slightly more likely to have a smartphone

The biggest hurdle for new smartphone user adoption is likely going to come down to data plan pricing, an issue we touched on in relation to the Microsoft Kin phones earlier this week. Again, this is an area that represents large opportunities to carriers like Sprint and T-Mobile who trail the titans Verizon and AT&T.