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A third of new cellular customers last quarter were cars

Most smartphones go to existing customers, with the real growth coming from tablets and other devices.

85th Geneva International Motor Show - Day 1 Photo by Harold Cunningham/Getty Images

With the U.S. smartphone market saturated, most of the growth in the cellular industry is actually coming from other kinds of devices including tablets, machine-to-machine connections and lots and lots of cars.

In the first quarter, for example, the major carriers actually added more connected cars as new accounts than they did phones.

That doesn't mean there weren't a lot of phones sold, though, but most smartphones went to existing customers. When it comes to new accounts added, so-called "net adds," things were fairly split among cars, tablets, phones and industrial connections, according to a new report from industry consultant Chetan Sharma.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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