Pew Study: 35% of U.S. Adults Own a Smartphone

More than one-third of all U.S. adults have a smartphone, according to a survey published by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, one of the clearest snapshots yet of how smartphones are changing the U.S. mobile landscape.

The survey found that 89 percent of all U.S. adults have some kind of cell phone and that 42 percent of those are smartphone owners, which translates into 35 percent of all U.S. adults. Pew broke the survey results down by varying demographic groups, and found that Android devices are the most popular, and that smartphones are more popular among the affluent.

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Mobile Ads Outperform Standard Banners

As more marketers from across industries begin to embrace mobile advertising, more attempts at measuring their efforts will not be far behind. Benchmarking efforts by digital advertising solutions provider MediaMind (formerly Eyeblaster) indicate that campaigns for different verticals should have different expectations—and that mobile banners see more clicks than standard banners on the PC-based internet.

In July 2010, MediaMind released statistics from 2009 showing that mobile banners beat standard banners in both clicks and conversions for automotive campaigns. Now, the higher clickthrough rate (CTR) for mobile banners can be extended across verticals.

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When's Prime Time in Mobile? Same as TV

Prime time in mobile is shaping up to look a lot like TV: Working stiffs turn to their phones after they've logged off their computers for the day and plopped down on the couch at home.

Users surf the mobile web and apps on phones most during the early evening, between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., and keep usage up through the night, according to a recent study from third-party ad server MediaMind. Looking at billions of mobile ad impressions across devices, carriers and operating systems, mobile ad click-through rates are also highest between 7 p.m. and midnight, with clicks reaching a peak at 8 p.m. MediaMind serves global campaigns for advertisers and agencies in all digital media, including mobile.

Mobile ad network Jumptap concurs with the findings and so does Google. The highest click-through rates -- 0.63% -- happen between 5 and 6 p.m. on Jumptap's U.S. mobile ad network, said Chief Marketing Officer Paran Johar. Findings are based on the network's 83 million unique users' 11 billion ad requests on both the mobile web and in apps.

Mobile's overlap with TV prime time especially makes sense considering so many consumers are parked in front of the tube with phone in hand. A whopping 86% of U.S. mobile internet users watch TV with their mobile devices, according to a Nielsen and Yahoo study published in January.

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Nielsen: Average U.S. Smartphone Data Usage Up 89% as Cost per MB Goes Down 46%

According to Nielsen’s monthly analysis of cellphone bills for 65,000+ lines, smartphone owners – especially those with iPhones and Android devices — are consuming more data than ever before on a per-user basis. This has huge implications for carriers since the proportion of smartphone owners is also increasing dramatically.

Growth in smartphone data usage is clearly being driven by app-friendly operating systems like Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. Consumers with iPhones and Android smartphones consume the most data: 582 MBs per month for the average Android owner and 492 MBs for the average iPhone user.

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comScore: Smartphones Now Owned by 1 in 3 Americans

comScore has released data showing 76.8 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in May 2011, up 11 percent from the preceding three month period. Google Android ranked as the top operating system with 38.1 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers, up 5.1 percentage points. Apple strengthened its No. 2 position with 26.6 percent of the smartphone market, up 1.4 percentage points. RIM ranked third with 24.7 percent share, followed by Microsoft (5.8 percent) and Palm (2.4 percent).

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Nielsen: In US, Smartphones Now Majority of New Cellphone Purchases

According to Nielsen’s May survey of mobile consumers in the U.S., 38 percent now own smartphones. And 55 percent of those who purchased a new handset in the past three months reported buying a smartphone instead of a feature phone, up from 34 percent just a year ago.

Android continues to be the most popular smartphone operating system, with 38 percent of smartphone consumers owning Android devices. However, while Android also leads among those who recently purchased a new smartphone, it is the Apple iPhone that has shown the most growth in recent months.

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Google sees 500,000 Android devices activated everyday

Google is activating half a million Android devices a day, a big jump in just the last couple months, a sign of growing momentum for the platform. Google’s VP of mobile Andy Rubin tweeted out the new milestone, saying activations are growing 4.4 percent week over week.

In early May, the company boasted that activations were up to 400,000 a day with 100 million cumulative device activations, representing 36 OEMS, 215 Carriers and 310 devices.

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