The ‘race’ for smartphones: Nielsen examines ethnicity and mobile

Have you ever wondered which ethnicity purchases the most smartphones (by percentage) in the U.S.? And of those devices purchased what operating system is most popular within each race? No? Us either. But that hasn’t stopped the folks at Nielsen from posing the question. The analytics company has gone ahead and compared the smartphone preferences and penetration rates in Hispanics, Whites, African Americans, and Asian/Pacific Islanders from Q4 of 2009 to Q4 of 2010. How did these four ethnicities report? According to Nielsen, smartphones have the most penetration amongst Hispanics and Asian/Pacific Islanders; each having a 45% penetration rate. African Americans showed a 33% penetration rate in Q4 in 2010 and Whites had 27%. What else is notable? Both Hispanics and Whites are fairly evenly split in their preference for iOS, Android, and BlackBerry — iOS has a very modest 2 point lead. African Americans favor BlackBerry OS and Android, while Asian/Pacific Islanders heavily favored Apple’s iOS and were evenly split when it came time to choose between Android and BlackBerry. Hit the read link to check out the full report from Nielsen.Read