MetaFacts TUP/Technology User Profile analysis results for subscribers
What we do defines us more than what we are carrying. This MetaFAQs profiles smartphone users by their regular activities – those which are most popular worldwide and those unique to the country. It further splits out activities into four groups: younger and older adults that are employed versus those who are not employed outside the home.
During the pandemic, employees have scrambled to be able to work from home, often using their personal devices in lieu of employer-provided technology products. This TUPdate reports on the specific work-related activities regularly done by employees that do and don’t work from home using their smartphones, home PCs, work PCs, and tablets.
Smartphones are used differently among younger than older employees as well as adults that are not employed outside the household. This TUPdate reports on each group – their weekly hours used, their unique set of activities, and their differing use of voice assistants.
Email continues to lead as the major communication activity across all devices. One-to-one video calls have grown rapidly. Worldwide and US employees are showing their Zoom/Webex fatigue, as both work and personal web-based group meetings have subsided.
Working from home requires more communication than ever, both a broad range of devices (smartphones, computers, tablets), and types (calls, messages, meetings with and without video). Employees working from home use computers for different communication activities than they do with smartphones. This TUPdate compares a detailed list of communication activities among those working from home and those not working from home, and also identifies which devices – PCs, smartphones, or others – are used the most for communication by work from home status.
Users with a choice of devices choose home PCs over smartphones more often for certain entertainment and shopping activities. Conversely, users choose smartphones over home PCs for other activities such as listening to paid streaming music. This MetaFAQs reports on which activities out of over 80 activities are done with smartphones, home PCs, or game consoles versus any of the other types of devices.
Employees use personally owned home PCs for work. Well before the pandemic, this has been a widespread practice. This MetaFAQs reports on the work-related activities done with home PCs among employees that work from home and those that do not. It also compares home PC activities from the 1987 wave of TUP.
Smartphones are above the 50% mark for nearly every type of activity and for being used for the most activities within that type. Worldwide, over half of users mostly use a smartphone for communications, social networking, shopping, and graphics/imaging. PCs still form a primary platform for many shopping activities.
Worldwide, 15% of employed or self-employed online adults are working from home always or the majority of the time, versus 32% in the US. Worldwide, this rate is lower than one year earlier and in the US is effectively the same.
Globally, smartphone hours increased in 2020 and returned to prior levels in 2021. In the US, average weekly hours subsided with PCs while slightly increasing with smartphones and tablets.