U.S. smartphone adoption is faster than any other major technology shift

Before we have an epic clash of iPhone lovers and haters, let’s all take a deep breath here: the transformative power of the iPhone on smartphone sales isn’t merely because it was a great phone, but that it helped to open the smartphone market beyond hardcore business travelers, and it made a compelling case to those consumers. The result wasn’t just a lot of iPhones sold, but that smartphone sales across the board grew rapidly (i.e. RIM sold more BlackBerrys after the iPhone launched).
By transforming the smartphone market into a consumer electronics one, it also made everyone else start to focus on that larger market. RIM attempted to position itself as a messaging phone for consumers, Android successfully pivoted to a consumer-oriented OS, and Microsoft (eventually) abandoned Windows Mobile to create the consumer-oriented Windows Phone OS. Those who moved quickly and competently to embrace the consumerization of the smartphone market are today's market leaders.
This change in smartphone market also coincided with roll out of 3G; the concurrent shift to online economic activity and the developing consumer app market helped to reinforce the new role of smartphones in our lives. We can’t say for sure how fast smartphones will hit market saturation (75%) but they have already crossed the 50% mark, and with the roll out of 4G LTE networks and the continued march toward putting mobile devices at the center of our lives it would seem that smartphones should easily beat out the current reigning champion – TV. Television took a scant 5 years to move from 40% to 75% adoption, but smartphones may do it in half the time.
Not that smartphones should get too comfy with their title – they themselves have spawned the very technology that may beat them: tablets. Tablets hit 10% of the market in less than three years - far faster than smartphones or anything else. It’s early days in terms of tablet adoption, and we can’t know whether tablets will ever achieve PC-like levels of market penetration, but for the moment they are being adopted at a rate that mocks the standards set in the previous century and a half of technology adoption.

source: technology review