Smartphones now normal for Americans

If you live in the United States, the chances are you own a smartphone. And if you’re black, it’s probably an Android.
The percentage of American adults with a smartphone has gone from 35 percent to 56 percent in the past two years. The proportion with a standard cellphone (usually defined as one where you can’t install applications) is now 35 percent, leaving just nine percent of people without some form of mobile phone.
The figures come from the a survey for the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, which says it’s the first time the smartphone ownership has passed 50 percent. Last year’s figure was 46 percent.
As you’d expect, the proportion of smartphone ownership peaks among 25 to 34 year olds (81 percent), dropping consistently among older groups and falling to 18 percent for people aged 65 or older.
Ownership is significantly stronger among richer people and those with a higher income (which may simply correlate to being richer), while urban and suburban folk are almost 50 percent more likely to own a smartphone than rural dwellers (which could be a combination of income and shitty coverage.) Pew noted that the older somebody is, the more effect income has on whether they own a phone: it’s a status symbol for middle-aged and a norm among the young.
Men are slightly more likely to own a smartphone than women (59 percent to 53 percent), while there’s a potentially surprising racial breakdown with ownership at 53 percent among white people, 60 percent among Hispanic people and 64 percent among black people.
Another particularly notable racial point was that both white and Hispanic people had an almost identical split between iPhone and Android ownership (roughly 26 to 27 percent in both cases.) However, only 16 percent of black people had an iPhone, compared with 42 percent having an Android handset.
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