90% of U.S. adults own cell phones - 50% use mobiles to go online

New findings show that over 50 percent of adult cell owners now use their phones to go online and 17 percent of adult cell owners do most of their online browsing using their mobile phone.

Findings in February 2012 showed that almost 90% of U.S. adults own a cell phone of some kind and about six in ten adults (63%) go online wirelessly using cell phones, laptops, e-book readers, and tablet computers. New research from Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project shows that more than half of cell owners are now using their cell phones to go online. Over a third of those accessing the Internet through their mobiles say that they mostly use their phones to go on line not their laptops or desktop computers. Among the other key findings: • 55% of adult cell owners use their mobile phones to access the Internet on their mobile phones; this figure has almost doubled in the last three years. • Young adults and non-whites are those mostly using their mobile phone for Internet use. • 64% say it’s more convenient to use their cell phones for browsing. • 10% say they use their cell phones since they don’t have other means of online access. Pew state in their report that online access using cell phones has become increasingly common and online use has grown due to the massive surge in smartphone ownership. They report that just over half of American cell owners (53%, representing 46% of all U.S. adults) now own a smartphone and 90% of these smartphone owners say they are using their phones to access the Internet.