Gaming On Cell Phones Rises To 34% Of Phone Users

The proportion of cell phone users who say they use their phones to play games has risen by more than half over the last year, bringing the size of the total mobile gaming audience to 34 percent of all cell phone owners in the United States, a new study says. That data, drawn from the Mobile Access 2010 report released by the Pew Research Center, is part of a larger trend that reflects Americans' increasing use of cell phones, rather than computers, to perform a variety of entertainment- and communication-related activities. According to the Pew survey, people are also significantly more likely to use their phones to take pictures, access email and the internet, take pictures and video, and play music than they were a year ago. Younger users are even more likely to use their phones for advanced tasks: 60 percent of them report playing games on their phones, and their usage in all other categories is also higher than that of any other age group. By comparison, Pew says about 42 percent of Americans own video game consoles.