By CLICK Staff
NEW YORK—Need to be convinced that your practice or optical retail
website needs to be mobile-friendly? Here are some noteworthy stats.
More than half of all adult cell owners now use their phones to go online as
of April 2012.
The Pew Internet Project’s latest survey on phone use
defines a “cell internet user” as anyone who uses the internet or email
on their cell phone. And 55 percent of all adult cell phone owners use
their phones for one or both of these reasons.
Because 88 percent of U.S. adults now own a cell phone, that works out to 49 percent of all U.S. adults who go online using a cell phone at least occasionally. Three-quarters of these cell phone internet users (74 percent) say that they go online using their phone on a typical day—meaning that on a typical day fully 41 percent of all cell owners are using their phones to go online.
Online access using cell phones has become steadily more commonplace since the Pew Internet Project began measuring this behavior in the spring of 2009. At that point 31 percent of cell owners used either the internet or email on their mobile devices. This increase in cell phone internet use has occurred in tandem with the recent explosion in smartphone adoption. Just over half of American cell owners now own a smartphone of some kind, and 90% of these smartphone owners say that they use their phone to go online.
Every major demographic group is more likely to engage in this activity in 2012 than was the case in 2009, the Pew researchers point out. In fact, when asked what device they normally use to access the internet, 31 percent of cell phone internet users say that they mostly go online using their cell phone.
When asked for the main reason why they conduct most of their online browsing on a mobile phone, these cell-mostly users point to several factors including these:
- Cell phones are convenient, always available – 64 percent of cell-mostly internet users mention factors related to convenience or the always-available nature of mobile phones when asked for the main reason why they do most of their online browsing on their cell phone.
- Cell phones better fit people’s usage habits – 18 percent of cell-mostly internet users say that their online habits (or the habits of those around them) make their cell phone a simpler, more effective choice for going online. Just under one in ten (7 percent) say that they do mostly basic activities when they go online and do not require a more advanced device, while 6 percent say that they simply find their cell phone to be easier to use than a traditional computer.
Back to Newsletter
Back to Newsletter