Nearly half of mobile phone owners (48%) own smartphones as of January 2012, according to Nielsen. More than two thirds of mobile owners (69%) who bought new phones in the past three months chose smartphones.
In general, the likelihood of owning a smartphone rises with income, but 18-24-year-olds and 25-34-year-olds in all income brackets are more likely than even the highest-earning adults over 55 to own smartphones.
Smartphone ownership is more gender-balanced in the U.S. than in the UK, according to comScore. Men make up 51% of U.S. smartphone owners and 56% of UK owners. In the U.S., smartphone ownership is growing rapidly in several demographics, including people with household incomes under $25,000 (up 98% between fourth-quarter 2010 and fourth-quarter 2011), retired adults (92%), 55-64-year-olds (79%), and women (70%).
Sending/receiving text messages and taking photos are the top two mobile activities, though accessing email and social networks via mobile are increasingly widespread.
More than four in 10 U.S. mobile users (feature or smartphones) accessed email from their phones in December 2011, and more than a third accessed social networks from them.
The fastest-growing mobile activity is looking for health information (134%). Visiting retail sites via mobile is the second fastest-growing activity, up 87% between fourth-quarter 2010 and the same period in 2011.
Mobile users are now equally likely to use apps and mobile browsers: 48% used each in December 2011.
Mobile Retail
Smartphones are increasingly popular in-store shopping tools. Women and men differ slightly in how they use smartphones for in-store shopping.
Consumers are becoming more comfortable with completing transactions via mobile. The number of mobile owners who made payments through their phones in fourth-quarter 2011 was 80% higher than the number who did so in the same period in 2010.
Most Important Features
Smartphone owners are about equally likely to cite Internet access, calling, and texting as the functions of their mobile devices they “cannot live without,” according to Prosper Mobile Insights.
Just over four in 10 smartphone owners (42%) say they have no access to landlines in the event that their mobile phones lose service.
Nearly six in 10 owners of smartphones or tablets (58%) admit to becoming stressed out when their devices lose service; 19% become extremely stressed out. Nearly one in 10 (8%) yell profanities and/or throw their devices when they lose service, while 13% post complaints on social media.
Speed Matters
Mobile users have high expectations for mobile web browsing: 12% expect sites to load faster on their phones than they do on their computers, while another 21% expect them to load equally fast, and 25% expect them to load nearly as fast, according to customer analytics company Kissmetrics.
When accessing the mobile web, only two in 10 consumers are willing to wait 20 seconds or longer for a website to load. Almost half of mobile shoppers (47%) expect retailers’ web pages to load in two seconds or less, and four in 10 (40%) will abandon a retail site that takes more than three seconds to load.
More than seven in 10 mobile users (73%) have encountered a website that loaded too slowly on their phones at least once in the past year. More than half (51%) have had a site freeze, crash, or send an error message during this time. Nearly half (48%) have visited a site whose formatting made it difficult to read on a phone.
Sources: “Survey: New U.S. Smartphone Growth by Age and Income,” February 2012, Nielsen, Elizabeth Luke, Communications Analyst – Mobile, 770 Broadway, New York, NY 10003; 646-654-5000; elizabeth.luke@nielsen.com; www.nielsen.com
“Mobile Future Future in Focus: 2012,” February 2012, comScore, Mark Donovan, SVP of Mobile, 11950 Democracy Dr., #600, Reston, VA 20190; 703-438-2000; http://www.comscore.com/2012MobileFutureinFocus. Price: Available online at no charge.
Prosper Mobile Insights Mobile Survey, January 2012, Prosper Mobile Insights, Pam Goodfellow, Consumer Insights Director, 400 W. Wilson Bridge, #200, Worthington, OH 43085; 614-846-0146; info@prospermobile.com; www.prospermobile.com
“How Loading Time Affects Your Bottom Line,” Kissmetrics, Sean Work, Minister of Propaganda, 13337 South St., #269, Cerritos, CA 90623; 888-767-5477; sales@kissmetrics.com; www.kissmetrics.com
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