• by Aaron Baar , December 10, 2014

In a bygone era, it used to be that people’s first activity upon waking may have been to light a cigarette. Now, it’s checking a smartphone. 

According to Deloitte & Touche’s most recent study on mobile consumer trends, 9 out of 10 U.S. consumers check their phones within the first hour of waking up (75% do so within the first 30 minutes of waking), and nearly a quarter (23%) look at their phones up to 50 times a day. 

“I view this as a good thing,” Craig Wigginton, vice chairman and U.S telecommunications sector leader at Deloitte, tells Marketing Daily. “It’s showing the device is indispensable now. It’s key to [consumers’] lifestyle and lifestyle management.”

The interest in always-on connectivity has spread to other areas as well. More than half (55%) of consumers are interested in connected home devices, and 63% say they are interested in connectivity in their cars. 

“Consumers drive adoption,” Wigginton says. “People know these connected devices are coming and the home and the car are the most tangible of them. I’m a little surprised [the desire] is not more.”

He’s surprised because people are reporting more over-the-top content consumption than ever before. According to the survey, 19% of consumers reported streaming more television or film content than in 2013, while 30% said they streamed more music. Overall, 16% said they streamed television or movies on a weekly basis in 2014, while 43% did the same with music or online radio.

Despite all of this increased usage, people seem satisfied with their current mobile network speeds. While 35% of consumers in 2013 said they were willing to spend an extra $10 for faster mobile download speeds, fewer than 20% of consumers were willing to do so in 2014. Indeed, 32% of consumers said they felt 4G cellular connectivity was comparable to their in-home wifi connections. Yet don’t expect that satisfaction to hold, particularly as more devices connect to the Internet, Wigginton says. 

“At this point in the lifecycle, people are satisfied,” he says. “I don’t think that’s going to last long, when you look at those [media] consumption rates.”

This increased dependence on 24-7 connectivity has led people to consider the value of their connections more. In 2014, people identified “price of the overall monthly subscription” as the top reason for selecting a wireless provider. In 2013, the top reasons were the availability of friends and family plans and overall network quality. Despite the differences in priorities, the survey indicates consumers intend to purchase new devices at the same frequency rate for the next five years.

And, in spite of the increased usage of mobile devices for nearly every aspect of life, mobile payments are still slow to catch on in the U.S. Only 7% of consumers have used their mobile phones to pay for an item in a store, which Deloitte attributes to many consumers not having Near-Field Communication (NFC) technology on their phones. As NFC becomes more prevalent (and systems such as ApplePay become more commonplace), the use of mobile payments will likely grow. (According to the survey, nearly a third of those who have NFC-enabled phones have used them for mobile payments within the past month.)

"Woman using Smartphone in bed" photo from Shutterstock.