Source: Business Intelligence
People Spend an Hour a Day on their Smartphones. The Business Intelligence study shows that the average smartphone user spends 58 minutes on his/her phone. Only 28% of the time is spent talking. The rest of the time is spent texting, visiting websites, social networking and playing games. With the huge growth in smartphones, and all the charts showing growth upward and to the right, the trends imply that in 10 years, people will be spending 26 hours a day on their smartphones. Disclaimer: The previous statement was not extracted from the BI report, and is pure speculation. 58 minutes is a significant amount of time though, and this needs to be taken into consideration by media folks in Hollywood and the Madison Avenue as well as in Silicon Valley. Eyeballs are all on smartphones these days, with interesting results.
In Australia, a Taiwanese tourist walked off a pier while checking her Facebook page on her smartphone. Although the woman could not swim, her priority was to keep hold of her phone. When rescued, she had her phone in her hand and had kept hold of it throughout the ordeal.
Smartphones are dominating our attention and seem to be reducing the need for PC's. IDC Forecasts PC Shipments to Fall by Double Digits In 2013. Ironic that Steve Jobs was credited in many ways for giving birth to the PC, and his iPhone-led smartphone revolution is now choking it.
The BBC reports that social media, smartphones and distractions of modern life are turning people off sex, at least in the UK. The Third National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyle found that before the advent of Smartphones and Facebook, men aged 16-44 were having sex one average 6.4 times per month. Today this has fallen to 4.9 times per month. It's not exactly surprising, but similar numbers were reported for women.
The impact of Smartphones is clearly somewhat far-reaching, and might be worrying to some. I'm just pleased that I no longer earn a living selling PC's and no longer live in the UK.
Author David Smith left Apple in 1991 and moved from the UK, to California in 1994.
David is President of Silicon Valley Business School, where he is teaching a class on Entrepreneurship & Startup Management.
David Smith also Brokers Technology Transfers and Patent Sale Transactions with Tynax, the Global Patent Exchange.
