Mobile Phones Impact Online Browsing Habits

There has been a notable increase in cell phone users that use their phones to browse the internet, states a report published this week by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. According to the report, 88 percent of U.S. adults own a cell phone of some kind as of April 2012, and more than half of these cell owners (55 percent) use their phones to go online.

As the BYOD trend has shown, many people are accessing work files, sending emails and conducting business through means other than a traditional laptop or desktop. This Pew research appears to be supportive of this trend as it found, for consumers, 31 percent of the “cell internet users” as the group is termed in the report, say they “mostly” go online using their cell phone. This means, say the Pew researchers, “17 percent of all adult cell owners are ‘cell-mostly internet users’—that is, who use their phone for most of their online browsing.”

Additional findings of the report:

• Young adults and non-whites are especially likely to use their cell phones for the majority of their online activity:
  • Nearly half of all 18-29 year olds (45 percent) who use the internet on their cell phones do most of their online browsing on their mobile device.
  • Half (51 percent) of African-American cell internet users do most of their online browsing on their phone; double the proportion for whites (24 percent). Two in five Latino cell internet users (42 percent) also fall into the “cell-mostly” category.

It was also found that those with an annual household income of less than $50,000 per year and those who have not graduated college were more likely than those with higher levels of income and education to use their phones for most of their online browsing. But regardless of economic status, the main reason cited by “cell-mostly internet users” for the trend: convenience. Researchers found 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 via cell phone.

The full report is available here.