Pew: Cellphones More Important To Users Than Internet, TV, Email

Anyone who doubts how important mobile phones are and will become as a platform and marketing medium needs only to look at the latest Pew Internet & American Life report. Cellphones are now more important to US adults than the internet, television, landline phones, and email. In addition, an increasing number of consumers are using their mobile phones for things other than voice communications, including accessing mobile internet content.

Pew conducted a telephone survey of 2,054 US adults in December, 2007 (500 were reached on their cellphones) and found the following:

Pew segments the data by race, age, and, in some cases, income. Among younger uses, as one might expect, the trends become even more pronounced:

18-29 year olds: Ever done (%) Typical day (%)

Send or receive text messages 85 60
Take a picture 82 31
Play a game 47 16
Send or receive email 28 10
Access the internet 31 14
Record a video 34 6
Play music 38 16
Send or receive instant messages 26 9
Get a map or directions to another location 18 6
Watch video 19 6

Just a day earlier, comScore reported that the number of users who access the Internet through mobile broadband connections (predominantly using a PC) had grown by 154 percent in a year. Currently, roughly 1 percent of the US online population uses mobile broadband to get online but those numbers should increase dramatically as the mobile infrastructure continues to develop — and more people use 3G mobile networks on their cellphones for internet access.

About The Author

Greg Sterling

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land, a member of the programming team for SMX events and the VP, Market Insights at Uberall.