A lot of useful demographic info on the use of mobile phones by Americans. Including insight along ethnicity, age and socio-economic factors.

Here’s the chart on what sort of data services people are using:

One of the insightful bits of sleuthing our friends at the Pew Research Center did was to examine “internet usage away from home or work.” They asked both two questions: the first was a “how often do you” style question and then the remaining was a more specific “in the past 12 months, have you” style question. Combining these results they discovered “that nearly two-thirds (64%) of internet users have gone online away from home or work, which could include wired access at libraries or in hotel rooms.”

They also asked about specific technologies used away from home: PDAs, wireless laptops, cell phones to tease out how many used wireless technology (as opposed to logging into a public terminal at a library, for example). Here’s what they come up with (emphasis mine): “41% of all Americans who have logged on wirelessly away from home” have done so with a PDA, wireless laptop or cell phone.

What sort of actions could you take to improve your business based on this information?

The New York Times reports on an M:Metrics study finding that yes, iPhone users do more internet surfing than smartphone users and mobile phone users. But we already knew that. Over at the M:Metrics site there’s more useful information, like

They [iPhone users] are more likely to be: male, aged 25-34, earn more that $100,000 and have a college degree, than the average mobile subscriber.

The Mark Donovan, a senior analyst at M:Metrics also adds this:

“While the demographics of iPhone users are very similar to all smartphone owners, the iPhone is outpacing other smartphones in driving mobile content consumption by a significant margin,” said Donovan. “In addition to the attributes of the device itself, another important factor to consider is the fact that all iPhones on AT&T are attached to an unlimited data plan. Our data shows that once the fear of surprise data charges is eliminated, mobile content consumption increases dramatically, regardless of device.”

Nice to have a little demographic and analysis in with our iPhone-is-eating-the-mobile-market coverage.

“We thought it was a mistake and made our engineers check the logs again” is what Vic Gundotra, head of Google’s mobile operations, said to the Financial Times. Google’s engineers had just discovered that iPhone usage was 50 times more than any other mobile handset usage.

As mobile handsets and user interfaces improve, we’re going to be seeing a lot more people getting data from web servers while they’re on the go. This makes sense when looking at historical use of information. Rolodexes transforming into datebooks and planners. Those planners in turn morphing into PDAs. PDAs cross-pollinating with cell phones. At that stage, your old Rolodex plus your calendar are with you wherever you go. Pretty handy.

Now what if your calendar, email and old Rolodex are with you all the time plus the entire internet: in an easy to use package that makes your friends jealous? The iPhone has upped the ante on mobile devices and other companies will surely follow suit. If what Google’s engineers are seeing is any indication, more mobile use of the internet is imminent.