Rebtel discovers that 96 million Americans have a smartphone

Rating: Survey shows big difference in male/female tablet ownership

Stats about the mobile/cellular industry are exactly what we like here at GoMobile News and there’s some very interesting data buried away in a survey of US adults carried out by Harris Interactive on behalf of Rebtel. The main focus of the Rebtel mobile device survey is on the use of VoIP apps – which is what Rebtel provides, of course. However, it also found that 88 per cent of American adults own a smartphone; a standard mobile phone and/or a tablet device – with 18 per cent claiming they own a tablet, and 41 per cent claiming they own a smartphone. Typically some of the stats wouldn’t surprise anyone. For example, female smartphone owners shell out three times more on international calls every month compared to men. Women talk more than men? Get away!Anyway, Harris/Rebtel even did a nice bit of extrapolation for us. According to the 2010 US Census, there are some 234.6 million adults over the age of 18 in the USA.

With 41 per cent of the population claiming to own a smartphone, that’s about 96 million Americans and with 21 per cent of these making international calls on their smartphones, that works out to roughly 20 million Americans

Based on all respondents surveyed, men and women are nearly identical when it comes to smartphone ownership – with 41 per cent of women and 40 per cent of men claiming to posses one.

Women respondents were slightly more likely than men to indicate owning a tablet device, 19 per cent versus 16 per cent respectively.

Interestingly, age plays an important role in tablet ownership, but varies widely between genders.

Men aged between 18-34 were the least likely among all age groups to claim tablet ownership with only 11 per cent claiming to have one.

That compares to females aged between18-34 who were twice as likely as men (22 per cent) to indicate tablet ownership.

This led to Andreas Bernstrom, CEO with Rebtel, commenting, “We see a tremendous difference in spending habits between those who have a VoIP app for calling and those who don’t.”

“This is especially true across male and female tablet and smartphone owners,” he added.

Given that Rebtel claims to be the world’s second largest mobile VoIP company after Skype, we ought to say that anyone interested in obtaining a Rebtel app should visit here.

The company even has a version for Windows Phone (W7 Mango) owners as well as those with Android or iOS.

Incidentally, for those interested in the methodology, this survey was conducted online within the USA by Harris Interactive on behalf of Rebtel among 2,211 adults aged 18 or older.

© Dollargate Publishing 2012. All rights reserved.