LG, RIM BlackBerry Beat Out Apple iPhone For Mobile Phone Supremacy

The Apple iPhone has again topped another list of the top smartphones sold, or being used, in the U.S., with Apple's bread and butter product representing roughly 4 percent of the embedded base of all mobile phone subscribers.

But despite the Apple iPhone's apparent dominance, its 4 percent penetration isn't enough to unseat mobile phone leaders like BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM) Ltd. and LG for the total number of mobile phones in use.

According to a recent Nielsen Company study, the Apple iPhone wooed its 4 percent between January and October of 2009, making it the most widely deployed single smartphone.

The iPhone was followed by RIM's BlackBerry 8300 Series of smartphones, which includes the Curve, 8310, 8320, 8330 and 8350, all of which captured 3.7 percent of the installed base. RIM and BlackBerry appear again on the list of the Top 10 mobile phones in the U.S. at No. 7 with the BlackBerry 9530 Series, more commonly known as the BlackBerry Storm, with 1.4 percent of the installed base; and at No. 10 with BlackBerry 8100 Series, which includes the Pearl, 8110, 8120 and 8129, that captured 1.2 percent of the installed base.

So, crunching the numbers, with three series of smartphones among Nielson's top 10, RIM and BlackBerry have a hold of 6.3 percent of the embedded base of subscribers, meaning RIM has more devices and more users out there than the Apple iPhone.

Same goes for LG, which makes the majority of popular mobile phones available today. LG places on Nielsen's list four times: at No. 4 with the LG VX9100, or enV2, with 2.1 percent; at No. 5 with the LG Voyager with 1.7 percent; at No. 8 with the LG VX9700, or Dare, with 1.3 percent; and at No. 9 with the LG Vu series, which includes the CU915 and the CU920, with 1.2 percent.

All told, LG has 6.4 percent of the installed user base of the top 10 mobile phones sold in the U.S., according to Nielsen. That puts LG ahead of both RIM BlackBerry and the Apple iPhone.

Other honorable mentions to make Nielson's top 10 list were the Motorola RAZR V3 series, which ranked No. 3 with 2.3 percent, and the Samsung SPH-M540, or Rant, which ranked at No. 6 with 1.5 percent.

Along with looking at the top 10 mobile phones in the U.S., the Nielsen study also examined the top 10 Web sites accessed by mobile phones; the top 10 brands accessed by mobile phones and the top 10 mobile video channels.

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