How close is the smartphone market to saturation?

The US market can not be called a market with a maximum value of the level of penetration (smartphones). However, this market is the most extensive among those for which we have reliable (at least from two sources) data, and the penetration rate here is one of the highest.

A graph showing the US position relative to other countries on this indicator for the previous year can be found here . A year ago, the penetration rate was 56.4%. I track changes in data from comScore, judging by which the penetration rate at the end of March was at the level of 58.2% and 55.3% at the end of January. Against the background of these indicators, the graph looks very plausible.
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According to the latest data from comScore , the penetration rate reached 68.8%. In order to have an idea about the limitations of growth of a given value, it is necessary to consider the pattern of its change over a long period. Analyzing this pattern, it will be possible to understand whether there is a clear inflection point on the graph and, therefore, predict the level of technology penetration at which the market will saturate (the graph curve at the saturation point will approach some asymptote value).

The graph below shows the change in the percentage of the number of smartphone users to the number of people who do not use smartphones since the end of 2009.



The following graph displays the flow rate of new smartphone users (measured by the number of new users per month).



Summarizing, we can say that the rate of transition of users to smartphones remains almost unchanged. So, March '14 brought 2.8 million new users, March '13 - 3 million, March '12 - 2 million, March '11 - 3 million.

Note that on the graph (to the histogram) I added a curve that (retrospectively) shows the average (for every 3 months) value of the number of new users - the fluctuations of this curve turned out to be relatively predictable due to their seasonality. It is also worth noting that the penetration rate of 50% was reached almost 2 years ago, but no noticeable changes were made by society in the process of adopting technology. The percentage of owning mobile phones in the United States is still growing (albeit very slowly) and is currently at around 90%.

The only conclusion that can be drawn from the above is that even despite the current penetration rate of 68.8%, the US smartphone market is far from saturation. Given that the United States holds the leading position among the "developed markets", there is hardly any reason to believe that in countries with a larger population, the market was able to reach saturation levels.