All I Want For Christmas Is An iPhone

The Apple iPhone is the most popular handset in the United States after Nielsen found that it had more US subscribers than any other mobile phone.

This is according 21 December data published on the blog of the Nielsen Company, which specialises in marketing and media information. Nielsen shows the “Apple 3G iPhone,” by which it presumably means the iPhone 3G, to own 4 percent of the “embedded base of all subscribers” for January through October 2009.

Sliding in right behind it is the RIM BlackBerry 8300 Series (Curve, 8310, 8320, 8330, 8350i, Nielsen adds) with 3.7 percent of subscribers. Trailing these pack leaders is the number three Motorola RAZR V3 series, with 2.3 percent of the subscriber base, followed by the LG VX9100, with 2.1 percent, and the LG Voyager, with 1.7 percent.

Contenders six through 10, each with less than 2 percent of the subscriber base, and just fractions of a percentage point between them, are the Samsung Rant, the RIM BlackBerry Storm, the LG Dare, the LG Vu series and the RIM BlackBerry 8100 series, made up of the Pearl, 8110, 8120 and 8129.

The sites people are visiting on their handsets? Number one, reports Nielsen, was Google Search, followed by Yahoo Mail, Gmail, the Weather Channel and Facebook. MSN Hotmail grabbed sixth place, followed by Google Maps, ESPN, AOL Email and CNN News.

Morgan Stanley reported last week that within five years more users will access the Internet using mobile devices than via desktop PCs.

Meanwhile Nielsen also found that the number one handset maker was the number 10 brand accessed over a mobile phone in the US. Number one was Yahoo, two was Google and three was MSN/WindowsLive/Bing. Number four AOL was followed by the Weather Channel, Facebook, CNN, Fox and ESPN, reported Nielsen.

More people watched videos on YouTube than anywhere else, followed by Fox Interactive Media. The Weather Channel, interestingly, was the third place people watched videos. It beat out Comedy Central, CS, ABC, MTV, NBC, ESPN and 10th place E.

ComScore, another surveyor, reported on 18 December that Apple iPhone OS users surpassed Microsoft Windows Mobile users for the first time in October. And Time magazine, not operating on a time frame ending in October, placed the Motorola Droid at the top of its 2009 gadget list.