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Half of Britons own a smartphone

by Tim Green
Monday, February 20th 2012 at 5:06PM

Feature phone minority losers.

New data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech shows that smartphones contributed 71.4 per cent of mobile phone sales in the 12 weeks ending January 22nd.

This stunning growth pushed smartphone ownership past 50 per cent.

Dominic Sunnebo, global consumer insight director at Kantar, said: “For the first time ever, you are now in the minority if you don’t own a smartphone.

"With more people jumping on the bandwagon, there is huge opportunity for both retailers and manufacturers."

The stats also reflected the fightback by iOS after a period of Android creep. Kantar said that Apple its share of the British market from 21.7 per cent a year ago to 29.1 per cent now.

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Windows Phone 7 took over two per cent of the market for the first time with the Nokia Lumia 800 taking the lion’s share. That's just short of Symbian's 2.8 per cent share.

Kantar reckons the WinPho platform could grow its share to around 8 per cent in the latter half of 2012.

Sunnebo said: “One of the real positives for Microsoft Windows Phone 7 is how engaged its users appear to be with its devices. Eighty one per cent of handset owners have used social networking on their device in the past month, higher than both iOS & Android.

"Meanwhile, three quarters have used GPS, indicating that its decision to include Nokia maps for free was a price worth paying to drive user engagement.”