According to a recent survey conducted by Pew Research, cell phone penetration in the US stands at 91% and nearly two-third (63%) of these use their phone to go online. This results in 57% of american adults using mobile internet. However, one-third of these mobile internet users make use of their cell phone to access internet mostly; 34% of ameriacan-adult-mobile-internet users mostly access internet on their cell phone. It was also seen that 85% of young adults in the age group of 18-29 use their cell phones to go online, which is a 10% increase from last year’s findings. While adults in the age bracket of 50-64 comprised of only 36% of cell internet users in the US, the figure has increased two-fold (51%) in 2012.
Over half of all American adults (56%) now own a smartphone of some kind and 91% of them use their phones to go online. The overall mobile internet growth is largely driven by younger adults, non white, college educated and financially well-off users.
The Young adults – regardless of income level – were more likely to be smartphone owners, while for older adults, owning a smartphone is more of an ‘elite’ phenomenon. On the basis of income level, smartphone ownership was high (78%) among households with annual income of more than $75,000. The findings indicated higher internet penetration among various segments and their dependence on smartphones too.
Device Preferences For Internet
The survey also captured the devices preference of cell internet users (63%) to understand the usage frequency of mobile internet. Nearly 34% of these cell internet users said that they mostly use their cell phone rather than Desktop, laptops or any other device to access internet. Out of rest 76% cell internet user, 54% claimed they use a device other than cell phone to go online while 11% claimed that they use both cell and other device equally to go online.
The survey was conducted between April 17 and May 19 2013 among 2,232 adults in US ages 18 and over. While all the responses were collected on telephone, of these 1,127 interviews were conducted on respondent’s cell phone.
Source: Pew Research
