Smartphones account for 28% of all handsets in the US according to NPD Group
The research firm NPD Group have just announced a new survey that shows smartphone sales in the USA grew by 47% in Q2 and accounted for 28% of all handset sales. That’s a number big enough to make anyone selling to mobile take note – it’s more than a quarter of all your customers. And it’s not all Apple iPhones either – the report goes on to reveal that 35% of handsets shipped with keyboards rather than touch screens, pointing to Blackberry, Google Android and Windows Mobile phones. Samsung and LG are highlighted as top selling manufacturers in the report.
Interestingly, feature phones made up a massive 72% of phone sales during Q2. These devices may be more traditional in design but they deliver a great web browsing experience and many of the features found in the more expensive smartphones, such as Wifi and GPS. So while Apple is doing a great job building excitement and consumer demand, many of those consumers are simply getting the features they need through their favorite phone manufacturer. You can read more about this report at Fiercewireless.com.
The other interesting report this week came from Fortune magazine, which announced that Research in Motion, the manufacturer of the Blackberry phone, is the world’s fastest growing company. To put that into perspective, Apple appear way down at position 39 and Google only make it to position 68. The full list can be seen here. This clearly shows that Blackberry is the most important smartphone to be targeting.
By using Bango Payment you can be confident you are already selling the most to Blackberry customers and giving them the best possible payment experience. You also have the advantage over other mobile billing solutions that don’t work on Blackberry – they either fail completely or present far more complex payment screens that lose sales. Blackberry phones connect to the internet via servers owned by Research in Motion, this blocks important identification information and prevents standard operator billing from working. The same happens when a smartphone or feature phone connects over Wifi – again identification information is not available which prevents most solutions from offering operator billing. All our mobile payment products use Bango Identifier technology to identify customers and ensure they get the same simple operator billing experience. It works on Blackberry’s connected via RIM servers and on smartphones or feature phones connected over Wifi.
