Charles Golvin from Forrester Research has just reported that they’ve received data back from a survey they issued during October and November of 2009. It wasn’t mentioned how many people were surveyed, but here are the results anyway, and they’re rather interesting:
- Smartphone penetration, and a smartphone is defined as something running an operating system that allow for native application development, is up to 17% of all consumers surveyed. That number is up from 11% this time in 2008, and 7% this time 2007.
- QMD, or Quick Messaging Devices as Forrester calls them, are devices that feature a full QWERTY keyboard, but don’t have a smartphone operating system. Nokia recently said that they’ll introduce S40 devices (dumdphones) with QWERTY in 2010. In 2008 only 9% of customers had a QMD, in 2009 that number is now up to 15%.
- For every iPhone user there were 2 BlackBerry users.
One of my predictions for 2010 was that “one in three people will end up owning a smartphone by the end of next year” and if this rate of growth not only continues then it looks like I’ll be proved right.
We’re all going to be a little bit smarter, thanks to our smartphones, by this time next year.