2018 global mobile consumer survey: US edition

Smartphones take center stage—again

Over the past year, smartphones easily remained the most favored mobile device among US consumers. Our survey results showed that smartphone penetration grew three percent reaching 85 percent. The only other mobile device that saw increased market penetration was smartwatches, with one percent growth year over year. Not surprisingly, growth was strongest among older age groups, reflecting already strong adoption among younger generations.

Regardless of age, virtually all US consumers are viewing their smartphones more often than ever before, on average 52 times per day. Smartphones have established themselves as the “Swiss army knife” of mobile devices, remaining the preferred mobile device for banking, social media, watching video, video calls, news, games, photos, and videos creation. They also serve as a hub for monitoring actions and controlling other devices—tracking fitness levels, controlling music, casting video to TV, selecting TV content, monitoring calorie intake, and controlling home security and heating/cooling systems.

And smartphones remain the go-to device across a vast array of communication channels, showing strongest growth this year in Internet-based communications such as SMS, voice calls, email, and social networks.

It’s no secret that smartphones are a primary driver of today’s “always connected” lifestyle: More than a third of adults report that they use their smartphones “very/fairly often” for business purposes outside normal working hours. And, 59 percent say they use their personal smartphone during normal working hours “very/fairly often.”

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Maturing mobile behaviors affect tablets, wearables, mPayments

2018 may have marked an inflection point in smartphone vs. tablet market penetration: Tablets had the largest year-over-year decline in market penetration of any device in our study. Consumers appear to consider tablets best suited for a few specific tasks, and they are not a preferred device for popular mobile activities (news, music, games, and video). Larger smartphone screens may have consumers reconsidering whether they really need a tablet. Tablets are not a preferred device for popular mobile activities (news, music, games, and video).

Among wearables, only smartwatches increased market penetration over the past year, while market penetration fell for fitness bands, e-books, portable game players, and virtual reality headsets. Smartwatches undoubtedly benefited from increasingly tight integration with smartphones and addition of features once unique to fitness trackers—squeezing some fitness-band makers out of the market. Daily usage is growing for owners of fitness bands and smartwatches but consumers still haven’t found the “killer app” that will invite broader adoption and usage.

Not surprisingly, an overwhelming majority of our survey respondents expressed data privacy concerns, specifically about sharing, use, and storage of personal data. Most respondents believe that companies they interact with online use their personal data and often share it with third parties. Data privacy concerns aren’t triggering changes, however: Willingness to share personal information remained about the same year over year.

On a related note, growth in mobile in-store payments (mPayments) remains slow. The top two reasons consumers don’t use mPayment are security concerns and lack of perceived benefits. This is unfortunate since mPayment is actually more secure than a physical credit or debit card: Instead of using card information, mPayment apps generate digital tokens that function like credit card numbers but are useless if stolen.

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Voice assistants, 5G represent top opportunities in coming year

Our survey revealed that voice assistants and 5G gained notable momentum. Many believe voice assistants could be the next big thing in human-computer interaction, after touch. The smartphone remains very popular for voice-assistant use and market penetration of voice-assisted speakers nearly doubled over the past year. Despite the availability of complex applications for digital assistants, most consumers prefer simpler uses such as searching for information, playing music, and making phone calls.

With 5G services scheduled to begin mass deployments in 2019, anticipation is building among consumers looking forward to faster data-transfer speeds, lower latency and improved responsiveness, and the ability to connect many more devices simultaneously. Interest in 5G rose across all age groups over the past year.

Our survey confirmed significant consumer interest in IoT solutions, particularly the connected car, although many are reluctant to actually pay for it. The perceived value of most connected-car functions rose over the past year, with route tracking, maintenance, and traffic/weather updates ranking highest, but willingness to pay declined. Given that these highly valued services are already available to consumers free of charge through other web and smartphone based applications, it is easy to understand consumers’ hesitation to pay.

Survey respondents view home-control and home-monitoring solutions as having the greatest potential value but only slightly more than half are willing to pay for connected-home products and services. Some reluctance may be tied to consumer concerns that smart-home technologies could make them more vulnerable theft, damage, or privacy issues.

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