Smartphones are certainly commonplace, but recent research drives home how important they are for users.
Few items are more ubiquitous nowadays than smartphones. Whether one is at home, in the car, on the train or simply walking down the street, smartphones are in the hands of just about every passerby.
So it goes as no surprise, then, that smartphones have greatly affected how Americans conduct their daily affairs and pursue their interests, including real estate. Below, we’ve spotlight four particularly striking findings from a recent Pew Research study on smartphone use:
1. A Clear Majority – In case you had any doubts about smartphone prominence in today’s society, here’s a stat to quash your skepticism – today, 64 percent of U.S. adults own a smartphone, up from 35 percent in 2011.
2. Multiple Uses – Ninety-seven percent of smartphone owners use their device for text messaging, while 92 percent use it for calls, 89 percent for Internet access, 88 percent for e-mail, 75 percent for social networking and 55 percent for news. So smartphones are, in short, widely used for a multitude of purposes, and anyone not utilizing the medium for their business is missing out on an enormous market.
3. Smartphone Dependency – Perhaps the most interesting finding in Pew’s study was that 7 percent of U.S. adults (including 15 percent of Millennials) are “smartphone-dependent,” meaning they rely on their smartphone for their Internet access. Compare that with a complementary finding in our recent report on home searches – that more than half of Millennial and Generation X buyers use a mobile device during their home search, and 31 percent of Millennials and 26 percent of Gen Xers found their new residence on mobile devices – and you have clear evidence that smartphones will only grow in prominence as time goes on.
4. One-Stop Shop – We already mentioned in an earlier point that smartphones have many practical uses, and Pew also found that owners utilize their phones in many unexpected ways. For instance, 62 percent of smartphone owners use their phone to learn about health conditions, and 18 percent used their smartphone to submit a job application. Although those two applications are not related to real estate, they do indicate a willingness among smartphone users to utilize their phone beyond its initial purpose, and we see similar experimentation in real estate with contracts and the like.