Some 8.1% of U.S. households do not have landline telephones, up from 4.2% in the spring of 2000. Non-landline consumers are those who have chosen to rely solely on cell phones or no phone at all.
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| Men make up the majority of the cell-only community |
“While non-landline households traditionally have been characterized by downscale and less-educated consumers, this is clearly no longer the case,” says Andy Arthur, VP of Client Services at Mediamark Research Inc., which conducted the study.
MRI’s research shows that while males represent 48% of the total adult population, they account for 57.6% of the cell-only population.
“If the traditional patterns hold, these young males may be the leading edge of a larger, more mainstream group of cell-only consumers,” Arthur says.
Of the 8.1% of total U.S. households that do not have landlines, more than three in 10 (31%) have neither a cell nor a landline, down from 70% in spring 2001. Since cell-only households have significantly higher incomes than phoneless households (median HHI $32,948 versus $16,058), and since cell-only consumers are younger (median age 28.8 versus 38.7), the growth of the cell-only segment explains recent tilts in the profile of the non-landline population.
A full 7.9% of single-person households are now cell-only, compared to 5.5% of households in general. That means that 16.7% of single-person households in which a cell phone exists are now cell-only. And, according to the 2004 study, the number of cell phones is equal to or greater than the number of household members in at least 26.3% of U.S. households.
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