Study Finds More Than a Third of Adults Have a Smartphone

Do you have a mobile phone? Is your mobile phone a smartphone? According to a new study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, the odds are increasing that your answer to both of those questions is yes.

Roughly 40 percent of American adults are still using old-fashioned mobile phones. You know–the kind that make phone calls, and do text messaging, but don’t have an app store and can’t play Angry Birds.

The smartphone owners are catching up, though. More than a third–35 percent–of adult Americans use some type of smartphone, whether that is an iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone 7, or WebOS device.

According to the survey, smartphone adoption appears to be higher among certain demographic groups. Those under age 45, non-whites, well-educated, and financially well-off users are among those more likely to own a smartphone.

Of the smartphone owners, nearly all reported accessing the Internet or email from the device, and 68 percent stated that they do so daily. A quarter of the smartphone owners went so far as to claim that they rely on the smartphone even more than a PC or tablet for accessing the Internet.

As a gadget geek, it is almost hard for me to fathom how smartphones aren’t the dominant device yet, but at least it is still trending upward. What isn’t hard to fathom is why those who do own smartphones use them–or even rely on them–so much.

The reason that some users connect to the Internet from a smartphone more often than from their PC is the same reason that smartphones killed the Flip video camera, and the same reason that the iPhone 4 is the number one device used to take photos posted on Flickr–it’s convenient. People may not have a netbook handy, and they may not carry their Flip, or a Nikon Coolpix camera around, but you can almost guarantee that they have their smartphone with them virtually 24/7.

As smartphones continue to mature and evolve, they are becoming more powerful and capable as well. The smartphones of today rival the computing power of desktops or notebooks from only a few years ago–and they fit in your pocket. The smartphone is not an ideal computing device for most tasks due to its small size, but the fact that it is always there makes it the go-to computing device in many instances.