Nielsen’s announcement on August 2nd that (1) it estimated that smartphones had grabbed 25% of the US wireless market (if that includes prepaid, then about 70M subscribers); and (2) that Android had surpassed iOS in terms of new activations over the past 6 months was well-covered. Given that Android has been adopted by 5 US carriers (Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and US Cellular, collectively representing over 90% of the market) and a multitude of handset makers, it was only a matter of time. That said, the announcement represented a tipping point of sorts. Nielsen’s chart on this is below.

As if to corroborate this, that same week, Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced that on a global basis, 200K Android handsets are being adopted daily, or 6M per month, or 18M per quarter.

When I bought the second Android available handset available in the US (HTC’s MyTouch 3G, from T-Mobile) back last fall so I could keep up with the joneses, finding an Android OS handset to play with beforehand was a bit of a challenge. (Thank you, Seamus.) Not so any more.

The icing on this particular cake came in the form of a call with my father, who casually dropped that he’d picked up a Samsung Galaxy from AT&T. The Galaxy falls in the “superphone” category, i.e., 1 GHz processor and up. Yes, that’s my Dad, rocking the Galaxy superphone running Android 2.1. That is a tipping point. He was migrating from Windows Mobile, also somewhat symbolic in itself. AT&T was apparently of little help during the data porting process, and I have to imagine that this issue will only grow going forward.

Quick post with my Rosum hat on. Today Rosum announced (pdf link) the launch of its Alloy chip, which utilizes broadcast TV signals to provide precise frequency, timing and location information for mobile devices and femtocells. Alloy was developed in partnership with Siano Mobile Silicon, which provides Mobile Digital TV receiver chips, for handsets, laptops, PNDs, and other mobile devices.

Speaking as a long-time Rosum contributor, this is a proud day.

KDDI Research Institute published a report (Japanese-language) I provided on the recent Net Neutrality Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (FCC 09-121, In the Matter of Preserving the Open Internet).

Blair Levin, Executive Director of the FCC’s Omnibus Broadband Initiative (i.e., the National Broadband Task Force), called the US the Doug Flutie of wireless broadband in a recent blog post on the broadband.gov website. His points: skills can only take you so far. You need raw assets, in this case spectrum, as well.

The FCC has more than hinted at reclaiming both broadcast TV spectrum and perhaps fallow government spectrum. CTIA, meanwhile, has asked that 800 MHz be liberated for wireless. The Broadband Task Force’s status update from the September 22nd FCC Open Meeting is available here. The section on spectrum starts on slide 61.