Have Smartphones Surpassed TV as a News/Information Channel?

The mobile phone has become an increasingly prevalent channel for Americans to receive news and information, in fact surpassing television in terms of importance, says Synovate.

About 35 percent of U.S. survey respondents say they cannot live without their mobile phones. Compare that to the 34 percent of U.S. respondents who said they couldn't live without TV.

There's your shocker: mobile phones now have become more important than television.

But the Internet clearly is the number-one source for news and information. Fully 58 percent of Americans say they can't live without the Internet, the highest response across all 11 national markets surveyed by Synovate.

One way of evaluating importance is to compare the monthly recurring cost of using a multi-channel video subscription compared to a smartphone subscription. Most smartphone fees, for a single user, now run in the $75 to $100 a month range. The typical video subscription likewise runs in the $75 to $100 range.

To be sure, a single video subscription can be shared among members of a household, so the value per person is different. But many households also use mobile family plans, which likewise changes the cost-per-user.

The comparisons are most direct for a single-user household, where it might be argued the value of a mobile and TV are about equal. In a four-person household, one might argue the mobile is more important as per-person spending is something like $50 a person, whereas mobility is about $80 per person.