How many smartphone users are there in New York City?
July 21, 2011 10:01 AM   Subscribe

How many smartphone users are there in New York City?

I'm trying to find some demographic data on smartphone users in New York City. So far I've found some nationwide stuff, like this and this, but nothing specific to New York City.
posted by dmd to Society & Culture (6 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Population of the US = 300,000,000
Number of smart phone users in the US = 63,000,000
% of US Population that uses smart phones = 21%
Population of NYC = 8,000,000

21% of NYC's population = 1,680,000 which is a very approximate number of smart phone users in NYC
posted by askmehow at 10:42 AM on July 21, 2011


Response by poster: That assumes that people in NYC have the same distribution of smartphone use as the population at large, which is clearly false.
posted by dmd at 10:52 AM on July 21, 2011


Best answer: My gig is measuring the mobile market and we track a range of mobile activity, including smartphone* ownership, on a monthly basis.

I think the Pew data overstates smartphone ownership. We project about 78% of the population currently has a mobile phone (235M) and just under 33% have a smartphone as their primary mobile phone. That's as of May and is a national figure but we see the same penetration in the Northeast.

Applying those penetration figures to the NYC (8.2M) yields an estimate of about 2.1M smartphone owners in NYC.

* We define smartphones as devices that are designed to make phone calls on carrier networks and run the following operating systems: Android, iOS, RIM, Windows, Palm/WebOS, and Symbian.
posted by donovan at 11:26 AM on July 21, 2011 [2 favorites]


Oh, and dmd you are right that we see higher penetration (of just about everything in mobile) in major urban areas--don't have that data at my finger tips but you might add 5% to number.
posted by donovan at 11:28 AM on July 21, 2011


Response by poster: Donovan - do you happen to have numbers for age and gender readily available?
posted by dmd at 11:46 AM on July 21, 2011


With all the lawyers/traders/etc that have a phone (either smart or not) AND a blackberry for work, I would be shocked (SHOCKED!) if the average in NYC wasn't a lot higher than elsewhere in the country.
posted by Grither at 12:52 PM on July 21, 2011


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