Six in 10 Americans now go online wirelessly using their mobile phones or a laptop with a wireless Internet connection, according to a July 7 report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
Of the 2,252 American adults surveyed by Pew in May, about 47 percent of them connect to the Web via Wi-Fi or a mobile broadband card on their laptops, up from 39 percent in April 2009. Another 40 percent use the Internet, e-mail, or instant messaging on their mobile phones, up from 32 percent last year. Altogether, that's 59 percent of adults who access the Web from a laptop or cell phone, up from 51 percent.
"The growing functionality of mobile phones makes them ever-more powerful devices for on-the-go communications and computing," report author Aaron Smith, a research specialist at Pew, said in a statement. "Cell phones have become for many owners an all-purpose chat-text-gaming-photo-sharing media hub that is an essential utility for work and a really fancy toy for fun."
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