While there are still quite a few die hard traditional phone users out there, the smart phones have all but taken over the industry. Blackberry and the iPhone are far and away the two most popular, but while most Blackberries still feature a keyboard, the iPhone is strictly a touch screen. Its success worried Blackberry enough to introduce several touch screen versions, but the lead that iPhone has created is quite substantial and will be very difficult to make up.

In a recent survey that was conducted by ComScore, it was estimated that there are just fewer than 24,000,000 touch screen phone users just in the United States. That number shows significant growth over the estimated 9,200,000 users from just a little over a year ago. With a growth rate of over 150%, this is a market that is clearly taking over. Heading the charge of course is the iPhone.

Of the 24 million or so people that are using touch screens, over 7.5 million of them were using the iPhone. When you think of all the different makers of cell phones that are on the market and then the different varieties of touch screens that are out there, this is a pretty significant number. The scary thing is that the number continues to grow every day as they release more and more applications and they continue to separate themselves from the competition.

This number will probably continue to rise as well because of the user base that calls the iPhone their own. For the most part, iPhone users are much younger than the average smart phone user and with over half of that pool being under 35, iPhone is aiming its marketing at the younger niche and it is obviously working. It is estimated that almost 60% of that demographic prefers the touch screen to the keyboard.