African-Americans own smartphones at a rate higher than Americans overall, according to [download page] a report released in September 2011 by The Nielsen Company. Data from “The State of the African-American Consumer” indicates 44% of US African-American adults owned smartphones in Q1 2011, 22% higher than 36% among the overall population.



In addition, African-Americans ages 25-34 have the highest penetration rate of all (53%), followed by ages 18-24 (51%). The lowest African-American smartphone penetration rate is found among those age 65 and older (20%).

African-Americans Talk on Smartphones 2X Rate of Whites

Nielsen analysis indicates African-Americans tend to use phones primarily for talking and texting. African-Americans talk an average of 1,298 minutes a month, more than twice that of white Americans, who talk an average of 606 minutes a month.

African-Americans also exhibit high use of phones for emailing (43%) accessing the mobile internet (41%) and visiting social networking sites (37%).

Other common African-American smartphone activities include app usage (33%), app alerts, playing pre-installed games and and text downloads (31% each). In addition, African-Americans send and receive an average of 907 texts a month.

Android Leading African-American Smartphone Platform

Mirroring the trends seen in the general population, Android has distanced itself from competitors in terms of platform penetration among African-Americans, taking 37% of the smartphone market share in that group. Unlike the general population, where the Apple iPhone runs a close second to Android, African-Americans are next-most-likely to use RIM Blackberry (30%), with iPhone a distant third (16%), followed by Microsoft Windows Mobile (13%).

Pew: Non-Whites Text More than Whites

Non-whites text more often than whites, according to data released by the Pew Research Center in September 2011.. Non-Hispanic blacks average 70.1 texts a day, which is 43% more than the Hispanic average of 48.9 texts per day and 125% more than the non-Hispanic white average of 31.2 texts per day.