17% of Mobile Owners Do "Most" of Their Online Activities on the Mobile

About 17 percent of mobile phone owners do most of their online browsing on their phone, rather than a computer or other device, the Pew Center Internet & American Life Project reports.


Most do so for convenience, but for some their phone is their only option for online access. That has obvious implications for the evolution of the broadband access business in the United States. What might now be only a convenience could later change into a preferred behavior, particularly for some users who have access to fourth generation networks and do not watch much online video. 


Some 88 percent of U.S. adults own a cell phone of some kind as of April 2012, and more than half of these cell owners (55 percent) use their phone to go online. That, the researchers say,  represents a notable increase from the 31 percent of mobile device owners who said that they used their phone to go online as recently as April 2009.


Also, 31 percent of these current cell internet users say that they mostly go online using their cell phone, and not using some other device such as a desktop or laptop computer. That is a significant number, since adoption of most products and services often assumes a faster adoption curve once 10 percent of users are reached.