Only 17 Percent Of Americans Own A Smartphone

A mobile phone made by Nokia - the 6555

You won’t really get to see a business man or woman without a whole set of dedicated gadgetry. It’s part of the job, usually, to carry around a laptop, a smartphone, a Bluetooth headset and in some cases even a portable printer. This gives a whole new meaning to “internet on the go”. It should really be called “office on the go” since you’re carrying what used to be your whole office along. This is thanks to computer and phone manufacturers who have managed to fit as many features as possible in considerably smaller devices.

Since you get WiFi access virtually anywhere nowadays, you can just sit down in a corner café and get some work done or you can search for any important information on the web with the help of your mobile phone while heading towards a meeting.  Average users are also quite interested in smartphones because they offer a lot of nice features, cameras, apps and a web browser.

That would lead you to believe that people who are employed in large companies make up for most of the smarphone owners in the US, followed by smartphone enthusiasts. According to a recent study conducted by Forrester, that’s not really accurate. While 82 percent of consumers own a mobile phone and 73 percent will admit on any occasion that their cell is their most used device, only 17 percent of people in the US own a smartphone.

If you’re thinking that this survey may not be entirely accurate because the people who were questioned might be older and less interested in technology, than it’s useful to find out that even the young ones who usually show a lot of interest in gadgets don’t really own smartphones. Less than one fourth of users between the ages of 18 and 40 own a smartphone, despite the invasion of such devices that we’re witnessing nowadays. Additionally, less than a quarter of Americans have an unlimited data plan which means that most people own regular mobile phones and have limited access to mobile internet.

Also according to Forrester under half of all US mobile owners have Internet access on their device but under a quarter of them will actually go online on their phones. The most popular activity on a mobile seems to be text messaging, which apparently 60 percent of phone owners will do but services like Twitter and Facebook aren’t catching on as much as we expected them to as the report indicates that only 14 percent of users access them from their phones. As CNN points out, this might be because smartphones aren’t exactly affordable and most people won’t rush to buy one. The same can be said about unlimited data plans. Some people don’t think they’ll get to spend a lot of time on the web while they’re away from their home computers.

It will be interesting to see what results Forrester will record in the next two years or so since there will hardly be any regular mobile phones left on the market. The cheapest cell phones we’ll find in stores will probably be entry level smartphones.