Click to Skip Ad
Closing in...

It’s taken just 4 years for QWERTY-equipped smartphones to go extinct

Updated Dec 19th, 2018 8:49PM EST
QWERTY Smartphone Market Share

If you buy through a BGR link, we may earn an affiliate commission, helping support our expert product labs.

BlackBerry diehards may love smartphones with QWERTY keyboards, but their numbers are very few. A new chart posted by Alex Barredo of Post PC shows that the percentage of mobile phones with full QWERTY keyboards was still at above 25% as recently as 2010, even though today it stands at somewhere around 1%. In fact, QWERTY-equipped phones didn’t really start to drop off the map until the period between 2011 and 2012, when their share of the market plunged from around 20% to well below 10%.

One thing that would be interesting to see is how much of an impact swipe-based virtual keyboards such as Swype and SwiftKey have had on QWERTY smartphone shipments, as many people who once clung to their QWERTY devices because of their typing capabilities found that they could get a better experience on modified Android keyboards.

Be sure to check out the full chart posted below.

Brad Reed
Brad Reed Staff Writer

Brad Reed has written about technology for over eight years at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.