Mobile phones continue to be much-discussed as we head into the holiday season—with iPhone leading the pack. NM Incite, a Nielsen/McKinsey company, found that the iPhone 4S has been the most frequently mentioned smartphone in terms of online buzz on blogs, message boards/groups, Twitter and Facebook, and online news posts, capturing 40 percent of online buzz about smartphones from July through December 2011. The iPhone 4S was introduced October 4.

Combined with Apple’s other best-selling handsets, the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS, Apple phones accounted for nearly two-thirds of all mentions about smartphones between July through December 2011. A handful of Android phones such as the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Droid Bionic, and HTC Evo series phones attracted substantial buzz leading up to the holiday shopping season, accounting for nearly a quarter of buzz.

BlackBerry models took in 10 percent of the buzz, led by the BlackBerry Bold series which was the third-most mentioned handset with over 6 percent of online buzz about these top smartphones.

Methodology: Using a list of the top 20 recently acquired smartphone handsets during the 3rd quarter, as well as a handful of recently released handsets such the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and Apple’s iPhone 4S, Nielsen looked at online buzz mentioning these smartphones from July – December 2011 posted in blogs, message boards/groups, public posts on Twitter and Facebook, and online news sites.