Adults Own Smartphone But Don’t Use Apps

A recent research by Teqno-Logical.com has revealed that more than 37% of 55+ adults in the UK own smartphones but don’t use most of their features, including apps.

“We have found out that 55+ smartphone owners usually don’t use the features of their devices. Moreover, most of their phones were bought for them by other people,” the authors of the survey said.

According to them, 68% of UK smartphone owners use their devices to make calls and nothing else. 18% of them also send text messages, 9% surfed the net and checked emails, 4% took photos and shot videos, and 1% used social networks. As for apps, most of the interviewed adults didn’t use them or didn’t even know what they are; only 7% said they downloaded apps and only 3% downloaded paid apps.

The research also showed that most of the UK’s 55+ adults didn’t buy their smartphones themselves – they got them from their relatives or children, which also explains why they don’t use most of their devices’ features.

Teqno-Logical.com also tried to find out which operating system is the most popular among the UK’s 55+ adults. It turned out that most of their smartphones (26.9%) ran Android, 21.4% were iPhones running iOS (I thought iPhones should be more popular, since they have user-friendly interface and are intuitively easier to use than most Android phones), 18.8% had Symbian on board, and 14.7% were BlackBerries. The rest of the respondents didn’t know what OS their phones had.

“It’s interesting that we didn’t meet any adult who had a Windows Phone device, but I guess it could have been expected – this OS is rather new, and perhaps it’ll need some time to appear in the hands of adults, too,” the researchers said.

The research was conducted in London, and 1268 respondents took part in it. It also showed that feature phones are still very popular – 58.1% of the UK’s 55+ adults had them, while a small number of people – only 4.7% – didn’t have any mobile phone.