mobile

You probably have a mobile phone of some sort.  I’ve had an iPhone since 2007 and really couldn’t imagine life without the sidearm.  My fiance, Sarah – after a short period of resistance – just got her first mobile device this year.  She and I were able to build our relationship without it (thanks in large part to Facebook and iChat), but having a direct line to each other has made things much easier.

At Social Business Strategies, we use mobile phones, Skype, and now Google Voice.  No land line needed here.

Just how important are mobile devices becoming in U.S. markets?  According to a recent survey by the CDC, One Fifth of US Households Use Only Wireless Phones.  As someone who hasn’t actively used a land line for over ten years, that number doesn’t surprise me at all.  What’s interesting is the difference in velocity of growth over the last few years:

Consumers seem to be gravitating to mobile-only households at a steady rate.  Again, nothing surprising.  Based on this chart we can theorize that by the end of 2010, the share of mobile-only households will hover somewhere around 25% of all U.S households, given an average increase of 2-3 percentage points annually.  But, that’s also dependent on the velocity of growth staying consistent with the previous years.  My gut instinct tells me that the rate of growth will probably increase to at least double that over the course of 2010.

Some of the numbers in the survey are even more revealing regarding the trend towards mobile only households:

More than two in three adults living only with unrelated adult roommates (68.5%) are in households with only wireless telephones.  This is the highest prevalence rate among the population subgroups examined.

Two in five adults renting their home (40.9%) had only wireless telephones.

Adults renting their home are more likely than adults owning their home (12.8%) to be living in households with only wireless telephones.

Nearly half of adults ages 25-29 (45.8%) live in households with only wireless telephones.

More than one-third of adults ages 18-24 (37.6%) and approximately one-third of adults ages 30-34 (33.5%) live in households with only wireless telephones.

In the first 6 months of 2009, the majority of wireless-only adults (57.2%) were ages 30+, up from 48.4% three years earlier.  Among all wireless-only adults, the proportion of adults ages 30+ has steadily increased.

Food for Thought
I think we should all be paying attention to this trend.  It would be interesting to learn what percentage of these mobile households use smart phone devices like iPhones, Blackberries, Androids, and other sophisticated phones, as opposed to standard sidearms.  But then again, that too doesn’t seem like it will matter much going forward.  Microsoft’s efforts in developing technology to allow more applications to be used on standard mobile devices has already begun changing the game, allowing users to access social applications like Facebook and Twitter from standard cell phones.  Barriers to adoption are being slowly, but surely, obliterated from all sides.  That always seems to be the case when there’s money to be made in an lightly-tapped market.

Now, consider location-based applications like FourSquare and GoWalla.  Cheryl Harrison did a nice writeup on how and why she’s using both of these apps.  These geo-targeted applications are creating social web extensions of brick and mortar experiences in dining, retail, entertainment, and many other real life businesses.  Users are continuing to jump on-board these game-structured networks at an alarming rate.  It’s fun and if you haven’t tried out location-based apps, give them a shot and look for how your shop(s) could benefit.

Your turn.

What do you think about the growth of mobile-only house holds in the U.S.?  Could this trend have an effect on your business in 2010?

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