Number Of Teenage Smartphone Owners Jumps Year-Over-Year, Claims Nielsen

Most of the time, we see smartphone manufacturers marketing their devices toward young adults. That may all be changing soon, as a new Nielsen report says that teenage smartphone owners are growing faster than any other age group in the United States. Nielsen posted the results of a July 2012 study today, in which it found that 58% of teenagers aged 13 to 17 now claim to own a smartphone.

That's up from only 36% who claimed they owned a smartphone in July 2011, so we're seeing some pretty significant growth there. Of course, teenagers have a ways to go before catching up to young adults aged 25 to 34, as 74% of them say they own a smartphone. Still, teenagers are by far the leaders in "smartphone adoption," so it may not be long before we see teenagers overtake young adults as far as smartphone ownership goes.

As for smartphone sales overall, it doesn't come as much of a shock to hear that Android is still in the lead. As of this July 2012 study, 51.8% of smartphone owners were using an Android handset, and three month acquisitions for Android were sitting at 58.6%. Apple is still in a strong second place position, with 34.3% of all smartphone users owning a handset running iOS and 33% of three month acquirers going for an iPhone over the competition. Once again, BlackBerry is slipping, with only 8% of smartphone owners rocking a BlackBerry handset, and only a measly 2.7% of three month acquirers opting for a BlackBerry smartphone.

Smartphone adoption in general grew too, with 55.8% of mobile subscribers now using a smartphone instead of a feature phone. That's hardly a surprise though, considering that we don't see too many advertisements for feature phones these days. What do you think of Nielsen's latest snapshot of US smartphone users? Are you surprised to see that smartphone adoption among teenagers is growing as quick as it is?