Survey says over 80% of US teens prefer iPhone over Android

The average American teenager is more likely to own an iPhone than ever before. The latest survey performed by investment firm, Piper Jaffray. The survey asked over 6,000 American teenagers across 40 different States about their smartphone preferences. The teens were of an average age of 16.

82% of the teens asked owned an iPhone while 11% were team Android. These numbers were recorded in the first quarter of this year and the numbers have steadily increased over the last few years with the latest numbers the highest Jaffray ever recorded. Meanwhile, 84% of teens said they anticipated their next device to be an iPhone.

Source: Piper Jaffray

As the numbers show, the Apple iPhone is very trendy among high school students in the United States. It’s been a while since any of us were in high school, so the kind of smartphone you have is very likely to come across as a status symbol. We’d imagine it’s probably like a blue bubble vs green bubbles ordeal (whether or not you have iMessage). Of course, this only represents a particular age demographic since the total market share in the US for iOS smartphones is teetering just around 45%, according to Statista.

The survey also conducted that 15% of teens had an Apple Watch while 20% of them planned to buy one in the next 6 months.

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Snapchat challenging Facebook among US youth

Washington: Facebook remains the most popular social network among Americans but faces a growing challenge from Snapchat for young audiences, a survey showed Thursday.

The Pew Research Center survey showed Facebook holding the dominant platform with 68 percent of Americans using the world’s biggest social network.

While Facebook leads the other social networks in all age groups, the gap has narrowed in the key 18-24 segment, where 78 percent use Snapchat compared with 80 percent for Facebook, Pew researchers found.

Facebook-owned Instagram, which emphasizes pictures and video, is also popular with some 71 percent of that age segment, Pew found.

The study is the latest highlighting Facebook’s challenge of keeping its core youth audience, while adding older users, amid growth in newer social networks like Snapchat, known for its disappearing messages and media snippets.

“As was true in previous years, Facebook remains the entry point to the world of social media for a majority of Americans,” said Pew research associate director Aaron Smith.

“At the same time, Americans today utilize a diverse range of online social platforms in addition to Facebook. And this is especially true of the youngest adults, many of whom have fully incorporated platforms such as Snapchat and Instagram into their social media diets.”

Pew found the median American uses three social platforms with considerable overlap among Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.

Twitter, meanwhile, continues to lag other platforms with 24 percent of Americans using the short messaging service.

Twitter recently reported its first-ever quarterly profit even though its global user base remained unchanged at 330 million compared with more than two billion for Facebook.

Pew said YouTube, which it does not consider a social network even though it has “social elements,” is used by 73 percent of US adults.

The report is based on a survey via mobile or landline telephone of 2,002 US adults from January 3-10 with a margin of error estimated a 2.4 percentage points for the full sample.

Two weeks ago, a report by eMarketer said Facebook is losing youths at a faster-than-expected pace and that many are turning to Snapchat.

Facebook has launched a Messenger Kids application for users under 12, with parental controls, saying many children already use messaging applications on their own.

Snapchat has faced problems of its own recently amid complaints about an application redesign which separates friends and media content, with a tweet from reality star Kylie Jenner causing a stock plunge. – AFP

Sprint to introduce 5G in six major US cities by 2019

Sprint announced it is preparing to deliver mobile 5G in the first half of 2019. Customers of the carrier in Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles are promised to get “5G-like capabilities”, later joined by Atlanta, Houston and Washington DC. In 2018 and 2019 the company will position thousands of Massive MIMO radios, increasing its network capacity across the country.

As part of the coverage expansion, Sprint promises to connect “people, places and billions of things with blazing fast speed, ultra-reliable, low-latency wireless service”. The press release asto states that “this breakthrough technology will enable new levels of innovation and progress including cloud robotics, telemedicine, connected cars and drones, augmented and virtual reality and more.”

Marcelo Claure, Sprint CEO, said the deep spectrum position gives the company an incredible advantage no other carrier has in the US. With implementing the new standard with the Massive MIMO cell towers, users should get up to 10 times the capacity of LTE and will have “a great experience” with their 6K and 8K TVs, along with applications such as HD Virtual Reality.

Dr. John Saw, Sprint CTO, explained the technology has already been tested for more than a year. All Sprint devices with 2.5GHz devices (Band 41) will benefit from the increased capacity and speed. In addition, Sprint is one of the carriers that is working along with Qualcomm in introducing the Snapdragon X50 modem with 5G capabilities.

Massive MIMO antennas are deployed by Sprint along with Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung. When launched, they will be capable of offering both 4G LTE and 5G on the same signal.

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