An Apple iPhone or iPod touch will become a central part of Abilene Christian University’s innovative learning experience this fall when all freshmen are provided one of these converged media devices, said Phil Schubert, ACU executive vice president.

At ACU – the first university in the nation to provide these cutting-edge media devices to its incoming class – freshmen will use an iPhone or iPod touch to receive homework alerts, answer in-class surveys and quizzes, get directions to their professors’ offices, and check their meal and account balances – among more than 15 other useful web applications already developed, said ACU Chief Information Officer Kevin Roberts. ACU’s vision for technology has been captured in a forward-looking film called ‘Connected,’ found online – along with information about ACU’s other ground-breaking mobile learning
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by Jonathan Cassell – Editorial Director and Manager, Public Relations
via iSuppli

What do you call a mobile phone that owners employ for voice communications less than half the time they are using it?

Apple Inc. calls it the iPhone, and iSuppli Corp.’s latest consumer survey research indicates that U.S. owners of the popular product are spending their time enjoying all its capabilities, i.e. voice, data communications and multimedia entertainment, rather than exclusively using it for traditional voice calls.

Owners of all types of mobile handsets use their phones for voice communications 71.7 percent of the time, according to research from iSuppli’s ConsumerTrak survey of U.S. residents. In contrast, iPhone owners spend just 46.5 percent of their time with the product engaged in voice calls. So what are consumers doing with their iPhones instead of talking?

U.S. consumers said they spent 12.1 percent of their iPhone usage time accessing the Internet, a stark contrast with 2.4 percent for all mobile phones on average. Furthermore, iPhone owners spent 11.9 percent of their usage time listening to music or other audio, compared to just 2.5 percent for all mobile handset users.

Rubicon Consulting published data from an online survey of 460 “randomly” selected iPhone users. Full PDF of results is available from Rubicon. They claim there’s a 3.8% margin of error with a 90% confidence interval, but the validity of the data depends on how truly random their sampling was.

Summary of results:

- Email is the #1 function.
- iPhone increases mobile browsing with 75% of iPhone users saying it has led to more mobile browsing
- 50% of iPhone owners replaced conventional (non-smartphones) mobile phones.
- 1/3 of iPhone users carry a 2nd phone
- 1/4 of iPhone users say its displacing a notebook computer.
- 40% of iPhone users said “strongly” that they want to add new software apps.
- 40% if iPhone users said the browser has trouble with some web pages they want to visit

A few interesting graphs:

Satisfaction

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