Nielson: iPhone 3G Is Most Popular Phone In The US [IPhone 3G Leads Mobile Subscriber Market With 4% Userbase]

According to The Nielson Company, the Apple iPhone 3G was the most popular handset in the United States from January to October 2009.  The iPhone 3G edged out the RIM Blackberry 8300 series by three tenths of a percent to lead the pack with a 4.0% embedded base of all subscribers.

Elsewhere on the list, the Motorola RAZR has fallen from the lead to just 2.3% of the subscriber market, in all six iterations of its V3 series handset.  LG  had four phones on the top ten list with the LG VX9100, the LG Voyager, the LG VX9700 Dare and the LG Vu series.  After the second-most-popular RIM Blackberry 8300, the Blackberry Storm placed 7th and the 8100 series came in at 10th most popular with 1.2% penetration.  The Samsung Rant had a cameo at 6th with 1.5% of the subscriber market.

Two points of interest on this list are 1) the low numbers of market penetration and 2) the lack of an Android-based product.  Due to the sheer number of products on the market, the low subscriber-per-phone totals may not be entirely surprising (between 1.2% and 4.0%), but this writer is surprised that no phone is near a double digit percentage of subscriber penetration.  While Android is a new OS and carrier-specific contracts have prevented one phone from amassing a large subscriber base, it remains surprising that the T-Mobile G1 or the MyTouch3g didn’t amass even 1.2% of the subscriber market.