All the doom and gloom surrounding the US economy’s downward spiral into recession apparently isn’t enough to stifle the US smartphone market. While the rest of the US suffers from weak consumer spending, the smartphone market is a veritable “shining star” of hope.
For the January to July 2008 period, NPD Group reports that overall handset sales were down. Consumers bought fewer mobile phones overall, 
and spent less per cellphone than in the same period the year before. But, that didn’t stop the smartphone segment from making some serious headway in the US.
Smartphone sales in the US saw a 71% boost, ending the first half of the year (1H 2008) with a respectable 9 million smartphones sold. As expected, Research In Motion (RIM), makers of the highly respected BlackBerry lineup of smartphones (not to mention the BlackBerry Bold and BlackBerry Thunder/Storm), took the lead as the top smartphone manufacturer in the US. HTC slid down the list and relinquished its position as the No. 2 smartphone manufacturer to Apple.
With the iPhone 3G supplanting the original iPhone as the hottest handset in the US, Apple has been surfing the wave of smartphone growth all the way to the (almost) top.
Smartphones comprised 19% of the overall US mobile phone market, an impressive increase from just 9% in 1H 2007. Says Ross Rubin, NPD’s director of industry analysis, “Declining prices, streamlined form factors, and consumer Internet connectivity have begun to bring into the mainstream devices that once appealed only to mobile professionals.”
RIM and Apple were followed by Palm Samsung and Motorola as the Top 5 smartphone makers in the US.
While the rest of the US strives for change, it seems that smartphones are changing the mobile phone market for the better.