Nielsen: The next smartphone battlegrounds will be Brazil, Russia, and India

While smartphone makers like Apple and Samsung are focusing their efforts on the U.S. and, increasingly, China, there are a few more countries that will soon demand their attention.

So says the latest data from Nielsen, which shows that Russia, Brazil, and India are quickly becoming the next battlegrounds for the smartphone makers of the world.

In India, for example, where the population is 1.2 billion, only 10 percent of the 3,900 people polled said they own smartphones. Things look roughly the same in Russia, where roughly half of those polled said they were still rocking touch screen-less devices.

Things are a bit more confusing in Brazil, a country that can’t seem to figure out what kind of phone it prefers. Thirty-six percent of phone owners there are running smartphones, while 44 percent use feature phones. (It also has a lot of owners of so-called “multimedia phones,” which feature touchscreens and QWERTY keyboards but not bona fide operating systems.)

The message to smartphone makers is clear: Start going after these countries before your competitors get there first.

Photo: McKay Savage/