It hasn’t even been five years since Apple unveiled the first iPhone. The device wasn’t the world’s first smartphone, but was arguably the most capable and well-designed and Apple’s marketing prowess it made it the first must-have gadget of its kind. Soon after came Android, which has powered increasingly impressive devices by a range of manufacturers.
The growth of smartphone adoption and associated mobile technologies has been staggering. As of the end of 2011, the majority of U.S. adults under the age of 35 now own a smartphone. Sixty-two percent of them have downloaded apps (mostly games), and mobile Web usage among these consumers has grown 45% since last year.
These are just a few of the stats in Nielsen’s latest report on the state of mobile media and consumer behavior. Much of the data won’t shock anyone. Teens text more than the rest of us, everyone is glued to Facebook, Android is the top smartphone OS and Apple is the top manufacturer.
Video is huge among smartphone owners, who watched about 35% more video content on their devices than they did last year. From the looks of Nielsen’s list of top apps, most of that video is coming from YouTube.
While many of the results drawn in many of these types of studies are not exactly breaking news, what’s intriguing is the massively increasing degree to which we’re all walking around with tiny, Web-connected computers in our pockets and the ways in which those devices are embedding themselves deep into our day-to-day lives. From the iPhone alarm that goes off in the morning to the miniature news reading and emails we check just before bed, these things aren’t just gadgets. They’re practically extensions of ourselves.
As we approach 2012, we expect to see this growth in the smartphone market continue unabated.
