Report shows more than half of U.S. teens own a smartphone

As recently as last year, 36% of U.S. teens had a smartphone in their pockets. But as Android models have been coming down in price, even with improved specs and more features on board (consider the $99 Motorola ATRIX HD), teens are replacing their featurephones for smartphones. The latest figures from Nielsen show that 58% of U.S. teenagers sported a smartphone as July ended. And it's not just the teens who are making the change. Those statesiders in the 25 to 34 age bracket have seen their ownership of smartphones increase from 59% to a whopping 74% over the same time period.

Among all mobile phone owners in the U.S., 55.5% owned a smartphone at the beginning of last month. A year ago, that figure was just 41%  Looking at purchases made in the states over the three months ended in July, 58.6% were Android phones. Nielsen's stats show that Google's open source OS is gaining many of its new converts from BlackBerry. The latter accounted for just 2.7% of the recent purchases made over the last three months and had a total 8% of the smartphone marketshare in the U.S. as of the end of July, which is quite a drop from the pre-touchscreen days. The Apple iPhone accounted for 33% of recently purchased smartphones and had a 34.7% slice of the pie overall.

source: Nielsen via Engadget