This statistic illustrates the share of Americans owning a smartphone in the U.S.. As of September 2024, 95 percent of 18 - 29 year old consumers do so in the U.S. This is according to exclusive results from the Consumer Insights Global survey which shows that 95 percent of 30 - 49 year old customers also fall into this category.Statista Consumer Insights offer you all results of our exclusive Statista surveys, based on more than 2,000,000 interviews.

According to a survey conducted in 2024 in the United States, 62 percent of respondents stated that their children had their own cell phone. By contrast, less than 40 percent of respondents stated their kids did not have one.

According to a survey conducted in 2024 in the United States, 30 percent of respondents stated that their children got their own cell phone when they were aged between 12 and 13. Furthermore, 20 percent of respondents stated their kids got their own device when nine or younger.

According to a 2019 SellCell survey, most children are allowed to have their first cell phone by the ages of 11-12. One percent get their own phone as early as between one and two years old.

In 2021, the number of mobile devices operating worldwide stood at almost 15 billion, up from just over 14 billion in the previous year. The number of mobile devices is expected to reach 18.22 billion by 2025, an increase of 4.2 billion devices compared to 2020 levels.

Moving forward with 5G

As the number of devices grows, so does our dependence on them to fulfill daily functions and activities. The use cases for mobile devices increasingly demand faster connection speeds and lower latency. The 5G network will be critical to fulfilling those demands, operating at significantly faster rates than 4G. In North America, for example, it is expected that there will be 218 million 5G connections, up from just ten million in 2020. This means around 48 percent of all mobile connections in North America. Globally, this figure should reach 20.1 percent by 2025.

6G: looking beyond 5G

While 5G has entered commercialization and is already creating new opportunities, researchers and engineers are already experimenting with 6G. Not only will the number of mobile devices continue to grow but cellular internet-of-things (IoT) devices are set to permeate more industrial sectors in the coming years, meaning a solution will eventually be required for network congestion and data transfer speeds.

6G ought to be capable of solving those problems before they arise, potentially enabling a network connection density ten times greater than that of 5G, and peak data rates up to fifty times faster than the rate of 5G. The Federal Communications Commission in the United States has opened spectrum for experimentation, and China have already launched what is described as a 6G satellite, so that actual potential of 6G should be revealed over the coming decade.

The average time spent daily on a phone, not counting talking on the phone, has increased in recent years, reaching a total of 4 hours and 30 minutes as of April 2022. This figure is expected to reach around 4 hours and 39 minutes by 2024.

As of October 2023, 97 percent of teenage girls in the United States had access to smartphone access at home. Teen boys aged 13 to 17 years had a smartphone access rate of 94 percent. In total, 95 percent of U.S. teens had smartphone access at home.

According to a 2019 SellCell survey, 35.6 percent of children spend between one and two hours using their cell phone every day. For 15.1 percent, the amount of time spent on the phone exceeds 4 hours a day.

The statistic shows the total number of mobile phone users worldwide from 2015 to 2020. In 2019 the number of mobile phone users is forecast to reach 4.68 billion.

Mobile phone users worldwide - additional information

The number of mobile phone users in the world is expected to pass the five billion mark by 2019. In 2016, an estimated 62.9 percent of the population worldwide already owned a mobile phone. The mobile phone penetration is forecasted to continue to grow, rounding up to 67 percent by 2019. China was predicted to have just over 1.4 billion mobile connections in 2017, while India was forecast to reach over one billion. By 2019, China is expected to reach almost 1.5 billion mobile connections and India almost 1.1 billion.

Most of the mobile market growth can be attributed to the increasing popularity of smartphones. By 2014, around 38 percent of all mobile users were smartphone users. By 2018, this number is expected to reach over 50 percent. The number of smartphone users worldwide is expected to grow by one billion in a time span of five years, which means the number of smartphone users in the world is expected to reach 2.7 billion by 2019. Samsung and Apple are leading smartphone vendors, with about 18 percent of the market share each.

According to a survey conducted in 2024 in the United States, 32 percent of respondents stated that their children will receive their own cell phone when they will be 12 or 13. Furthermore, 21 percent of respondents stated their kids will get their own device when 14 or 15.

The number of smartphone users in the United States was forecast to continuously increase between 2024 and 2029 by in total 17.4 million users (+5.61 percent). After the fifteenth consecutive increasing year, the smartphone user base is estimated to reach 327.54 million users and therefore a new peak in 2029. Notably, the number of smartphone users of was continuously increasing over the past years.Smartphone users here are limited to internet users of any age using a smartphone. The shown figures have been derived from survey data that has been processed to estimate missing demographics.The shown data are an excerpt of Statista's Key Market Indicators (KMI). The KMI are a collection of primary and secondary indicators on the macro-economic, demographic and technological environment in up to 150 countries and regions worldwide. All indicators are sourced from international and national statistical offices, trade associations and the trade press and they are processed to generate comparable data sets (see supplementary notes under details for more information).Find more key insights for the number of smartphone users in countries like Mexico and Canada.

How many smartphone mobile network subscriptions are active worldwide? The number of smartphone mobile network subscriptions worldwide reached almost seven billion in 2023, and is forecast to exceed 7.7 billion by 2028. China, India, and the United States are the countries with the highest number of smartphone mobile network subscriptions. Smartphone unit sales levelling off The smartphone market still has high growth potential, with the smartphone penetration rate remaining lower than 70 percent in many highly populated markets, in particular China and India. Global smartphone revenue reached 481 billion U.S. dollars in 2021, but was expected to have fallen to 463 billion in 2022. Despite stagnating sales, the increasing average selling price of smartphones is expected to support the market over the coming years. Leading smartphone vendors The leading smartphone vendors today are Samsung and Apple. These technology companies account for about half of all smartphone shipments worldwide.

The statistic shows the production of cell phones in China in selected years from 2000 to 2022. In 2022, approximately 1.56 billion cell phones were produced in China.

Between 2015 and 2021, regardless of their age, the share of children owning a smartphone in the United States grew. During the 2021 survey, it was found that 31 percent of responding 8-year-olds owned a smartphone, up from only 11 percent in 2015.

The statistic shows the share of the population in the United States that uses a smartphone in the United States from 2018 to 2025. In 2025, 87.08 percent of the population in the United States is forecast to use a smartphone.

Smartphone user penetration - additional information
A smartphone can be defined as a mobile device that uses an identifiable operating system and has a more advanced technological capability than a basic mobile phone. The number of U.S mobile users who have a smartphone is set to more than triple between 2011 and 2017 to almost 80 percent of all mobile users. This means that the number of overall smartphone users is forecast to top 200 million by 2017.

The smartphone penetration rate of mobile users is similarly high in the United Kingdom, with over 80 percent expected to own a smart device by 2017. However the smartphone market is set to grow at a slower rate in China with just under half of mobile users forecast to own a smartphone in 2017. The percentage is even lower in India where 32 percent of mobile phone users are predicted to use a smartphone by 2017.

Android phones and iPhones remain the most popular choice for smartphones with the two respective Operating Systems holding of 90 percent of the market sales in the U.S. in 2013. This trend looks set to continue with two new competing smartphones on the market, the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (Android) and the iPhone 6 (iOS), both unveiled in 2014.

This statistic illustrates the share of people who used their cell phone for maps/GPS navigation (in the last four weeks) in the United States as of 2023. The results were sorted by age. As of December 2023, some 37 percent of respondents aged 18 to 29 years stated they used their cell phone for maps/GPS navigation. The survey was conducted in 2023, among 9,587 respondents. Access millions of exclusive survey results with Statista Consumer Insights.

In 2022, smartphone vendors sold around 1.39 billion smartphones were sold worldwide, with this number forecast to drop to 1.34 billion in 2023.

Smartphone penetration rate still on the rise

Less than half of the world’s total population owned a smart device in 2016, but the smartphone penetration rate has continued climbing, reaching 78.05 percent in 2020. By 2025, it is forecast that almost 87 percent of all mobile users in the United States will own a smartphone, an increase from the 27 percent of mobile users in 2010.

Smartphone end user sales

In the United States alone, sales of smartphones were projected to be worth around 73 billion U.S. dollars in 2021, an increase from 18 billion dollars in 2010. Global sales of smartphones are expected to increase from 2020 to 2021 in every major region, as the market starts to recover from the initial impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

This statistic shows the smartphone penetration as share of the population in the United States from 2010 to 2021. In 2018, 69.6 percent of the U.S. population used a smartphone.

Smartphone penetration in the U.S. - additional information
Almost two-thirds of Americans are predicted to own a smartphone by 2017, more than a threefold increase since 2010. A smartphone is a mobile phone that uses an identifiable open Operating System (OS) and has more advanced computing capability and connectivity than a basic phone. The OS is supported by third party applications (commonly known as apps) written by the developer community.

The operating system must be able to support a multitasking environment and user interface that can handle multiple applications at the same time. Two of the most popular operating systems on the market are made by Google (Android) and Apple (iOS) who had a combined stake of over 90 percent of the smartphone market share worldwide at the end of 2016.

The popularity of the smartphone has risen immensely since Apple introduced its first iPhone in 2007, with 43.5 percent of all Americans forecast to own an iPhone by 2016. The first iPhone was notably different from other smartphones at the time because it used a large touchscreen for direct finger input, rather than the need for a stylus, keypad, or keyboard.

The first smartphone to use the Android OS was the HTC Dream released in 2008. Although numbers of people using this OS were low at first, it has since grown to be the most used operating system, with an estimated 107.7 million Americans projected to own an Android phone by 2016.

In December 2024, the production volume of cellphones in China amounted to over 166 million units. Cell phone industry in China – additional informationAccording to the statistic shown, 1.66 billion cell phones have been produced in China until December 2024. China has been one of the leading cell phone manufacturing countries in the world and may continue to develop steadily in the near future. In addition to its established status as a manufacturing country for mobiles, China’s domestic mobile phone market has become one of the largest cell phone markets in the world.The number of cell phone subscribers in China had reached about 1.71 billion in July 2023, displaying a growth momentum of a few million subscribers each month, which was hit hard by coronavirus at the beginning of 2020. Meanwhile, the number of fixed telephone lines had decreased to about 176 million in July 2023, marking a significant cutback over the past years. In terms of operating systems, Android and iOS had maintained their tight grip on the market with a mobile phone operating system market share of over 78 percent and 21 percent in China as of July 2023.

This statistic illustrates the rate of equipment in smartphones and classic mobile phones in France in 2014, by age group. Out of every 100 people between the ages of 18 and 24, 99 had a mobile phone, of which 81 had a smartphone and 18 had a mobile phone.