50% of U.S. Cellphone Users Have Apps, Pew Survey Says

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By Dan Rowinski / November 2, 2011 8:48 AM

The Pew Internet and American Life project released details of a new survey today showing the trends in how U.S. adults download apps to the smartphones and tablets. Including those that have downloaded and app or have apps preloaded to their devices, about 50% of all U.S. cellphone users have an app on their devices. That correlates to about 42% of all U.S. adults.
The amount of U.S. cellphone users that have apps on their devices rose from 43% in May 2010. Pew points out that the demographic has not really changed, there are just more people from those demographics downloading apps. For smartphones, they tend to be young, have higher incomes and college degrees and live in urban and suburban areas. How do you fit in these demographics?

Pew reports that half (51%) of users who have apps on their cellphones use them at least once a week. Less than a fifth (17%) do not use apps on a regular basis. For tablets, 39% use apps six or more times a week with 8% reporting no app activity.

In terms of paid apps, games are the leader. That comes as no surprise as game developers are the ones that are pushing the bounds of what these devices can do. People will pay for a good game. Weather, social networking, maps/search, music and news were the next highest on the list of apps usage. Of app users, 46% have paid for an app at some point, which is no different from the 47% that said the same thing in May 2010. About 52% said they paid $5 or less for apps with 17% have paid more than $20 for an app. Those that pay for apps tend to be aged 30 or above with college degrees in urban areas.

Check out the chart below breaking down what apps that users are downloading by age demographic. The results are pretty interesting. African-Americans are more likely to download apps that help them communicate with family and friends. About 46% of people use mobile apps to help them make decisions about purchases and 48% of users use apps to help them with work-related tasks.


Check out the full report here.

A note from Pew on the survey results:
The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project has begun to explore the contours of this relatively new digital phenomenon. In August of 2011, the Project conducted its most recent national survey of the state of apps culture. The survey was conducted from July 25-August 26 among 2,260 adults ages 18 and older in both English and Spanish, 916 of whom were interviewed on their cell phones.