The Rise of Apps Culture

Cell phone use in the U.S. has increased dramatically over the past decade.  Fully eight in ten adults today (82%) are cell phone users, and about one-quarter of adults (23%) now live in a household that has a cell phone but no landline phone, according to a new study released Tuesday by Pew Research Center.
Along with the widespread embrace of mobile technology has come the development of an “apps culture.” 

As the mobile phone has morphed from a voice device to a multi-channel device to an internet-accessing mini-computer, a large market of mobile software applications, or “apps,” has arisen. 

Among the most popular are apps that provide some form of entertainment (games, music, food, travel and sports) as well as those that help people find information they need and accomplish tasks (maps and navigation, weather, news, banking).  With the advent of the mobile phone, the term “app” has become popular parlance for software applications designed to run on mobile phone operating systems, yet a standard, industry-wide definition of what is, and is not, an “app” does not currently exist.

 
Apps are defined as end-user software applications that are designed for a cell phone operating system and which extend the phone’s capabilities by enabling users to perform particular tasks.

The most recent Pew Internet Project survey asked a national sample of 1,917 cell phone-using adults if they use apps and how they use them.  Broadly, the results indicate that while apps are popular among a segment of the adult cell phone using population, a notable number of cell owners are not yet part of the emerging apps culture.

35% of adults have cell phones with apps, but only two-thirds of those who have apps actually use them.

Of the 82% of adults today who are cell phone users, 43% have software applications or “apps” on their phones.  When taken as a portion of the entire U.S. adult population, that equates to 35% who have cell phones with apps.  This figure includes adult cell phone users who: have downloaded an app to their phone (29% of adult cell phone users), and/or have purchased a phone with preloaded apps (38% of adult cell phone users).

Yet having apps and using apps are not synonymous.

Of those who have apps on their phones, only about two-thirds of this group (68%) actually use that software.  Overall, that means that 24% of U.S. adults are active apps users.  Older adult cell phone users in particular do not use the apps that are on their phones, and one in ten adults with a cell phone (11%) are not even sure if their phone is equipped with apps.

When compared with other cell phone using adults, and the entire U.S. adult population, the apps user population skews male, and is much younger, more affluent, and more educated than other adults.  Overall, the apps-using population also skews slightly Hispanic when compared with other adult cell phone users.

Read more here.