Results of a recent survey suggest that more than 40 percent of the homes in the U.S. do not have landlines and use cellular phones instead.
Mobile telephone devices manufactured by many OEM's have become extremely popular globally. The increased demand of mobile telephones has affected the disconnection of landlines. A recent report published by the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that in the second half of 2013, around 41 percent of Americans dropped landlines and were using cell phones, which is an increase of 1.6 percent since the first half of 2013 and 2.8 percent increase since the second half of 2012.
The report is released two times every year as part of the National Health Interview Survey's Early Release Program. CDC interviewed more than 20,000 households in the U.S. during the second half of 2013.
The report highlights that those households which had both landlines and cell phones preferred using cell phones. The report also suggests that only around a quarter of American households used only wireless telephones around five years back.
According to the latest report, around 66 percent of people in the age group of 25 to 29 years lived only in households that had at least one wireless telephone. In the Midwest, the total number of wireless-only households surged by more than 4 percent to 43.7 percent during the second half of 2013.
Wireless telephones, which include smartphones, offer a wide array of functionality to customers. Apart from the traditional call making and receiving function, a smartphone also allows a user to access music, files, movies, and connect to the Internet and more while on the go. A report published by International Data Corporation's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker on Jan. 27 this year suggests that the total number of global smartphone shipments exceeded 1 billion in 2013.
"The sheer volume and strong growth attest to the smartphone's continued popularity in 2013," says Ramon Llamas, research manager with IDC's mobile phone team. "Total smartphone shipments reached 494.4 million units worldwide in 2011, and doubling that volume in just two years demonstrates strong end-user demand and vendor strategies to highlight smartphones."
The IDC report suggests that the low cost of the smartphones is one of the key drivers for the growth of the smartphone industry.
With the increased demand of smartphones, more people may retire from using landlines in the near term.
