Wed, 07/07/2010 – 11:26 by Also out today is Pew’s data on mobile Internet usage. The recent telephone survey of more than 2,000 US adults sought to explore how many went online via mobile devices (including laptops) and what users were doing on those devices. The big — and not-unexpected finding — is that people are becoming progressively more engaged with the Internet on mobile devices, with daily usage frequency increasing.
Here are some selected data points from the new
report. In terms of the overall sample:
- 82% owned a mobile phone “of some kind.” In real numbers that would mean about 187 million US adults (the base is 228 million US adults total).
- 40% of that population goes online via mobile phones. That would in turn mean about 75 million people (a number validated by several sources)
- 72% use text messaging
- 23% “have accessed a social networking site using their phone”
- 11% have purchased a product using their phone
All these numbers are larger if younger users (18-29) are segmented out of the general sample population. For younger people:
- 95% use text messaging
- 65% go online via their mobile phones
The report also found that African Americans and Hispanics are more engaged with mobile devices than Whites generally:
[M]inority Americans lead the way when it comes to mobile access—especially mobile access using handheld devices. Nearly two-thirds of African-Americans (64%) and Latinos (63%) are wireless internet users, and minority Americans are significantly more likely to own a cell phone than their white counterparts (87% of blacks and Hispanics own a cell phone, compared with 80% of whites). Additionally, black and Latino cell phone owners take advantage of a much wider array of their phones’ data functions compared to white cell phone owners.
Another “headlline” from the report is that 55% of mobile Internet users are online via their mobile phones at least once a day and 43% are access the mobile Internet “several times a day.” According to Pew’s numbers that would mean a daily US mobile Internet audience of just over 41 million people. This doesn’t consider mobile Internet use by peope under 18.
