Smart Phones and Age Demographics
By Paul on August 31st, 2010 in WeekendologyTags: demographics, mobile, smart phones
Recently I have been wondering how old are smart phone users today? Based on initial enquiries, it seems most smart phone owners are aged 25-34, followed by the 35-45 year olds and 45-55 olds. At 10.9% teenagers rank fourth ahead of people 55 years+ (according to Shut Up & Google It).
It would seem that monthly costs is the biggest deterrent for teenagers right now. The average monthly plan for a new smart phone on a 24 month contract is US$100. Here is a list of monthly current generation smartphone costs in US dollars I found on Gizmodo.
Assuming plans come down a lot, the average teenager will probably have a smartphone in 5 years time. Whilst 63.7% of American phone owners have sent a text, only 31% have used a mobile browser and only 29% have used downloaded apps (according to Mashable).
IMHO everything is pointing towards absolutely EVERYONE on the planet having a smartphone in about 10 years time. Even under-privileged kids in Africa will soon be browsing pictures of porn and food on the Internet using their cheap smart phones provided by the UN (okay, I made this bit up, but I do support OLPC! Do you?)
So why are teens so happy without Smartphones? Surely they should be stopping at nothing short of multiple part time jobs and a few well-timed tantrums to get a Smartphone? So what do teens do on their phones?
Resoundingly, they send text messages! In fact, 1 in 3 teens in America sends more than 100 texts a day! “Hello, my name is [blah] and I’m a text-a-holic!”
54% of all teens use SMS to contact friends. This is substantially more than other contact methods including instant messenger, email, Facebook, voice calls (by mobile or landline phone) and meeting face to face. That’s right, teens use texts MORE than any other mode of social interaction (according to the Pew Internet’s report on Teens and Mobile Phones by way of Benson Cheng).
Excuse me. My teenage cousin has just sent me a text!
NB: Pew Internet sampled 800 American teens aged 12-17 for their insightful report.
3 Responses to “Smart Phones and Age Demographics”
Bernard François says:
Thanks for this overview!
It seems a lot of the smart phone owners are overlapping with the typical casual games demographics. This may explain why major casual game developers are currently putting more eggs in the iBasket.
I wrote an article about this tendency on my company’s blog:
http://www.previewlabs.com/smartphone-game-development/
Feb 22, 2011 | Reply