UK adults prefer iPhone, teens pick BlackBerry

By Todd Haselton on Aug 4, 2011 at 8:20 PM

Research firm Ofcom recently released its annual Communications Market Report that surveyed 2,073 adults and 512 teenagers in the United Kingdom. The results revealed that 32% of adults preferred using the iPhone as their primary handset while 37% percent of teens chose to carry a BlackBerry smartphone. Ofcom didn’t reveal whether it was cost or feature sets that drove the preference, however. The firm also found that 37% of adults considered themselves “addicted” to their smartphones while 60% of teenagers admitted being addicted. What was the most visited website on a smartphone? Facebook clocked in 43 million hours of usage in December 2010 alone, according to the firm.

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Tags:: BlackBerry, iPhone, Smartphone, Study, Survey, Teen, Teens, UK, United Kingdom

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Anonymous

This flies in the faces of the people that said iPhones are just for fun and are for kids,

Steve Jenkins

spoken by the guy in the background…
http://www.facebook.com/people/Zach-Harper/100002701782554 Zach Harper

I just paid $21.87 for an iPaad 2-64GB and my girlfriend loves her Panasonic Lumix GF 1 Camera that we got for $38.76 there arriving tomorrow by UPS. I will never pay such expensive retail prices in stores again. Especially when I also sold a 40 inch LED TV to my boss for $657 which only cost me $62.81 to buy. Here is the website we use to get it all from, http://to.ly/aSiD
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Shock Horror

after further extensive costly research into this phenomenon the breakthrough explanation was found. In the UK an iPhone contract including “free” device comes in at about $40/month while a contract including an entry level BlackBerry 8520 comes in at $10-15/month.

In a further piece of research it was found that adults had a much higher propensity to drive Mercedes and BMW cars while teenagers tended to favor clapped out old Fords.

Bringit

And toddlers get their free Android phones.

Anonymous

Ya I was just gonna ask who prefers lagdroids.

Anonymous

Better than having a faggle
Homer

Obviously not as many people that want to have a super cool Apple logo on their extremely watered down, boring and over simplified smartphone so they can have a false sense of high class….
Anonymous

Nope that’s my BMW not my phone. And if it’s stupid to have something that’s easy to use and works well all the time without any hiccups,rebooting, software issues, hardware issues etc etc. Then you got me. As a developer and a computer programmer for 20+ years I can clearly say android BLOWS.
Allen Walker

Macboy, based on your comments and idiotic, unjustified arrogance, I doubt you’ve even been alive for more than twenty years.. If this is true, you have my deepest apologies for assuming you’re a prepubescent baby. Also, if it iud true and you are a successful programer of twenty years, then get a life and quit trolling on these forums. Its just pathetic..
Homer

Toy phones by Fischer Price are easy to use and don’t have any software issues either but it doesn’t make it superior by any means. The iPhone is lackluster spec wise and is always late to the game with everything… I mean it took Apple 3 iPhone launches to include a camcorder for Christ’s sake! And iPhone users couldn’t send a picture message until what… 2 years ago tops?? Now “4G” phones have been readily available for 14 months and the new iPhone launching this fall STILL won’t be 4G capable… What’s the point?!?!

The point is that Apple knows that the general public will buy their product over and over again just so they can have the latest Apple product, even if they hardly change anything or finally add a feature that is old news. And they get away with it because they have become that brand that everybody must have… If you ask a typical person who has/wants one why they want an iPhone, they will probably tell you “because it’s an iPhone.” It’s no different than a 14 year old girl who wants all of her clothes to be from Hollister or Abercrombie.

http://www.searingarrow.com AlienSix

I thought Android would have dominated teens, hmmm wonder why

serpentor

BBM and hard kb.

A soft kb and auto correct makes it harder to type new words high school kids make up with each new class.

BlahBlah

Imagine having to manually update the whole of UrbanDictionaryDotCom onto your brand stock new touch screen phone. Do they make an UrbanDictionary app for that? LOLZ
Anonymous

because in england they can’t spell things right
http://twitter.com/livingbasehead Shelton

I ducking hate when my ducking iPhone changes my ducking words around its so ducking annoying.

sirpaul

BBs are surprisingly popular in Europe. I visited again last summer and barely saw iPhones. In North America though, almost everyone I know has one. I went to a get together with some friends recently and 8 out of the 11 there has an iPhone and one of them had no phone…he now has an iPhone.

It’s the whole strength in numbers thing again…BBM is very useful if lots of people have it. What surprises me is that the iPhones potential as a gaming platform did not push teens to go with Apple vs RIMs products.
Test123

don’t worry, teen will grow up eventually :-)

playbook fan

and eventually they will be in some enterprise….hehe

http://twitter.com/BerryGoodThemes BerryGoodThemes

no1 in the uk has an android phone, no1 seems to realise this
uk teens/yound adults snap up cheap 8520s on payg which is why so popular and they cant afford iPhones hense why more adults have them!

not surprising stats at all
3Dee

It’s the lower end bbs which are popular amongst teens, 8520 curves for the most part. Curves are pretty good value here in the UK, and are readily available on ‘pay-as-you-go’ tariffs, which I’m guessing are the preferred choice of teens.
Anonymous

I’m surprised this post wasn’t entitled ” UK Adults GOOD! UK Teens BAD!”

Anonymous

Same here.

http://treworld.com Tre

Wtf? That’s so opposite… Do adults not have a job or something in the UK???

BlahBlah

Note that BGR loves to use weasel words like they did in this article. They say that adults “prefer“ iPhones where as teens “chose“ BBs. “Prefer“ doesn`t mean that they are actually using iPhones. Only that they would fancy having one. But it could mean that they are actually using something else. Now “chose“ means that people are actually using it.

Bullyboyb

Interesting point. I won’t stop visiting this site but the reporting or blogging on this site is on a downward escalator and will hit rock bottom soon. The only reason people still visit the site is for the comments.
BGR know this and will try and get as many comments per article by causing controversy and flaming iphone vs x debates to keep people clicking.

JMD

The reason is simple! Teens love BBM!
http://twitter.com/BeanTNT Bean

yea… until iMessenger releases

Ian

iMessenger will only try to be as good as BBM, but really it will just be like LiveProfile or Whatsapp which everyone that has used it before know are not a very reliable, lags, doesn’t alert real time unless you are IN the app all the time etc…

Anyways, Applebees always criticized BBM calling BB the Pager, but now when Apple releases it’s unique iMessenger, all of a sudden, this is the most innovative and most original feature, and of course the usual “apple is ahead of the curve” crap.

Not only in the UK, but think all Caribbean, Central and South America – People choose BB for lower cost phones, lower cost data plans and BBM. iPhone and Apple is about pure consumerism and hype – they can have a billion of useless and repeated fart apps, but in the end, people need a phone to communicate and in certain times for some entertainment. It’s great business though, Apple’s marketing is the real genius behind all this success.

http://twitter.com/MattNeithercott Matt Neithercott

It is probably more likely that kids can afford blackberries (cause they can get them for free on contract, and thus their friends see them with blackberries and then want blackberries….
Anonymous

Maybe, the adults want to feel like kids, and the kids want to feel like adults.
Anonymous

Oh.. and.. who wants Android phones??? babies or old people??
Anonymous

Teens are stupid. Next question.
http://apple.com Yes_iHave_an_iPhone

Breaking news 68% of UK adults prefer to NOT have the iPhone as their primary phone!
BurleyShells

Even in Canada I see the majority of teens and young adults have blackberrys. I’m 20 and I see about more than half of people my age have blackberrys and a lot of iPhones too.

Rarely see android phones. I was with a friend who bought an android phone a few weeks ago and she said it was lagging and freezing before she even got home. She ended up returning it and getting a bb.

Reevosss7

Get the sgs2, it has the lagfree feature built in.

Bullyboyb

Lol, you could put a 7 gig processor on an android device it will still lag and freeze. Just sold my sgs2. It had the battery bug and then came the browser scrolling lag issue. Wasn’t faster than my wp7. Android is crapware. Can’t believe anyone still thinks ita brilliant.

Worst keyboard I ever used. The auto correct and predictive text is a shocker.
my WP7 trophy software is miles ahead of that crap. i don’t care for hardware as long as the phone works as it should.

shogun

I never ever see androids anywhere and only see BBs and Iphones while commuting. I had Android for 1 day and it felt beta so I returned it for my 3 year old BB. There’s no standards among the Android makers and it’s the wild west for the apps…so everything causes the device to slow down or leak battery.

Anonymous

I don’t know about this. I was in London last week and I saw very few BlackBerry devices used by anyone, iPhone 4’s were everywhere.
It was quite a shock for me, I’m very used to asking for people’s PIN’s living in Waterloo, not phone numbers.

BlahBlah

You may be right. An adult roaming around school grounds asking for BB PINs would be creepy.

Anonymous

Hence my comment on asking adults for their contact information… What’s really creepy is how you interpreted that.

JeremyClarkson

In other news, idiotic UK teens binge drink themselves to death.
BlahBlah

So it seems as though these paid PR and “research” firms will start their reporting on any region or country that has changed in favor of Apple. Next we will see reports such as 52% of one-legged Brazilian men sporting bouffant hair styles prefer the iphone.

Hghghgrdrd

Ofcom is not a research firm. It’s the government regulator for communications.
Anonymous

Well played… that made me laugh.

CBreezy

You have to remember blackberrys are a hell of a lot cheaper than iPhones. That could explain why the kids have them instead of iPhones in the UK. Just saying…

BlahBlah

And also consumes a hell of a lot less data bandwidth because of data compression technology at the cloud levels making it cheaper for kids as well.

Anonymous

The kidz are awright!

Anonymous

Teens LOVE BBM. That’s why they choose Blackberry. Ask them.
Anonymous

Maybe they are buying the huge surplus of un-used blackberries cheap from the usa
JG

Calling Ofcom a ‘research firm’ is just sloppy; it is the UK government body in charge of all communications in the country, it is their equivalent of the US FCC, issuing licenses for broadcasting organisations as well as all for all wireless telephony communications.

If you can’t get such a basic fact correct, why should put any credence in any of your other writing?
Jh

Weird that FB was the most visited on a smartphone seeing how it sucks on all platforms.

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