Millennials share the top spot alongside Baby Boomers as the demographic with the most owners of smartphones, according to a new study. But surprisingly, the millenial generation favors Android over iOS systems.
According to a Nielson report released Friday, 85 percent of consumers ages 18 to 24 owned a smartphone in this year's second quarter, as opposed to 77 percent last year. And 86 percent of consumers ages 25 to 34 owned a smartphone, an increase of six percent from the previous year.
Men and women almost equally own smartphones, with 70 percent of men and 72 percent women owning smartphones respectively. Overall, 71 percent of the entire U.S. population is using these devices.
It may seem obvious that Millennials are one of the groups that owns the most amount of smartphones, but they favor Android phones over Apple iPhone. Research from comScore found that half of millennials (52%) have Android phones compared to 44 percent of iPhone users. This may be surprising, given Apple's popularity and media attention.
The iPhone 6 is expected to be pricey. Nomura Securities suggests that the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 could cost $650. Android smartphones are known to be less expensive, which probably makes them more appealing to millennials.
No matter what platform they prefer, millennials are spending about 14.5 hours a week on their phones. It's really no surprise that millenials are one of the groups that own the greatest number of smartphones seeing as a study showed that they thought their smartphones were more essential than deodorant.
