Almost 60% of US population are accessing the net wirelessly

Composition of the US wireless internet audience by device - Pew July2010

The latest Pew Research on Mobile Access shows that six in ten US citizens have used a mobile, wifi or a dongle to get online.

The ongoing research shows that things are changing significantly from year to year, in 2009 just over half (51%) of all US adults were going online on a mobile/laptop using wifi or a dongle  As of May 2010 the research shows that the figure has risen to 59%..

Mobile use is still quite small with just 40% using the internet, email, or IM, but that’s up from 32% in 2009. Where as those going online on a laptop over wifi or on a dongle is at 47% up from 39% in 2009.

One extremely useful stat in the report is the frequency of use. Those that do access the internet on their phones are using it more and more. In April 2009 those accessing the internet on their mobile on a daily basis was at just 24%, by September 2009 this had risen to 37% and it’s now at 43%.

Frequency of access for US mobile users has risen across the board

While mobile phone ownership hasn’t risen significantly in the last year the number of applications and features that users access has. In 2009 just 25% accessed the internet, that’s now a very healthy 38%, email use has also seen a similar increase with a rise from 25% in 2009 to 34% in 2010.

Additionally Pew also asked a few new questions of their users with some interesting results; as to be expected social networking is big with 23% of the mobile users accessing a social networking site on their mobile, 11% have used a mobile to purchase a product, and 10% have used their mobile to access Twitter type sites.

Interestingly the key users of mobile in the US are African-Americans and Latinos with 64% and 63% accessing the internet wirelessly, and they’re also using more additional features than anyone else.

Unsurprisingly the key age group for mobile is 18-29, with 90% of this age group owning and using a mobile. Amongst the 18-29 year olds

• 65% access the internet on their mobile
• 52% send or receive email
• 46% use instant messaging
• 21% use Twitter type services
• 20% have purchased something on mobile
• 48% have accessed a social networking site

The report is a mine of really valuable data about the US market and we’ve just touched the surface of it. There are 25 pages of really detailed data and it’s all free. If you download anything today make it this report.