Measuring the US mobile audience may sound simple enough, but as it turns out, many researchers count active mobile subscriptions, not the actual number of people with a mobile device.
Subscribers and subscriptions are terms often conflated in the industry, but the distinction is important. Because some people have more than one phone line, they end up being double-counted. This results in overstated audience figures and penetration rates that approach and eventually exceed 100% of the population.
For marketers, the number of mobile users is a more useful figure because it more accurately describes the audience, and thus potential reach.
So how big is the actual US mobile audience? Taking into account people of all ages, eMarketer estimates that mobile penetration is 76.5% in 2009, or 235 million people. This is expected to rise gradually to 255.4 million in 2013, or 80% penetration.
Predictably, this estimate is much lower than figures from CTIA – The Wireless Association, which measured 276.61 million mobile subscribers (subscriptions) as of June 2009. Using data from the US Census Bureau, this equates to 90% of the total US population.
Looking at mobile phone ownership, a closer proxy for actual mobile users, there is a fair degree of convergence among sources around 80% in 2008. Again, this is higher than eMarketer’s estimate of 75% for 2008, but only adults 18 and older were included by the New Millennium Research Council, Pew Research Center for the People and the Press and Ipsos MediaCT.
In Q4 2008, The Nielsen Company found that 77% of US teens had their own phone, while an earlier Nielsen datapoint indicated 35% of 8-to-12-year-olds had phones in 2007, bringing down the rate of penetration for all ages.
eMarketer’s low mobile user estimate is confirmed by a datapoint from comScore, which recorded 233 million mobile phone users in May 2009. This is just about in line with eMarketer’s 2009 figure of 235 million.
So don’t get too excited about 90% penetration estimates. Based on user figures, it appears mobile user rates won’t actually reach that level until sometime around 2020.
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Check out today’s other article, “Online Reaches Parity for Used-Car Shopping.”