Apple’s next big opportunity may be in China, but that doesn’t mean the U.S. still isn’t a big market for the iPhone(s aapl). As the country reaches smartphone saturation — the point where nearly everyone has a smartphone — Apple’s iPhone could account for a whopping 68 percent of the U.S. market by 2017, which works out to around 180 million handsets.

The figures come from industry analyst Horace Dediu, one of the best in the business from my perspective. And they’re not based on simple forecasts either. Dediu has a knack for leveraging statistical analysis that’s far more often right than wrong. The numbers for this particular forecast are based on Dediu’s research on smartphone uptake in the U.S.

This graph, for example, measures the historical smartphone penetration in the U.S. and Dediu found that sales of iPhones follow the same velocity as overall smartphone sales.