Global Media Intelligence 2019: United States

Key Features

The US is among the leading digital nations in the Western Hemisphere—including uptake of newer devices and services.

• For many device categories, levels of ownership in the US are robust but not exceptional, according to the most recent data from GlobalWebIndex. Some 91.9% of internet users ages 16 to 64 polled in H1 2019 owned a smartphone; 78.5% owned a desktop or laptop and 51.1% owned a tablet. By comparison, penetration for all these figures was lower than in the UK, for example.
• Smart TV ownership in the US is also middling, at 43.1% of internet users in H1 2019; many countries in Western Europe posted higher penetration during that same time.
• But the US did rank among the top countries polled by GlobalWebIndex for ownership of game consoles (38.7%), TV streaming sticks (34.7%) and virtual reality (VR) headsets (5.2%).
• Penetration rates of smartwatches and smart-home devices are also above average in the US, cited by 12.8% and 17.1% of respondents, respectively. Internet users ages 16 to 34 were most likely to own a smartwatch, while those in affluent homes were the primary constituency for smart-home products.
• Voice assistant usage is also relatively advanced in the US. More than a third (35.0%) of internet users had used voice search or voice command tools like Siri or Cortana in the past month. Voice search was most common in the 16-to-24 age bracket (46.1%) and declined in direct correlation with rising age to 21.9% among respondents ages 55 to 64.