---
title: "As it turns 6, a look at who uses the iPhone (no, not ’everybody’)"
description: "As Apple’s iPhone celebrates its sixth(!) birthday today, the pioneering smartphone has carved out a solid market position, and a demographically distinctive user base, within the ever-expanding world of smartphones (which, according to the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, more than half of Americans now own). The iPhone is, along with Google’s Android, […]"
date: "2013-06-29"
authors:
  - name: "Drew DeSilver"
    job_title: "Senior Writer/Editor"
    link: "https://www.pewresearch.org/staff/drew-desilver/"
url: "https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/06/29/as-it-turns-6-a-look-at-who-uses-the-iphone-no-not-everybody/"
categories:
  - "Smartphones"
---

# As it turns 6, a look at who uses the iPhone (no, not ’everybody’)

As Apple's iPhone celebrates its sixth(!) birthday today, the pioneering smartphone has carved out a solid market position, and a demographically distinctive user base, within the ever-expanding world of smartphones (which, according to the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, more than half of Americans now own).

![](https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2013/06/FT_13.06.29_IphoneAnniversary_01.png)

The iPhone is, along with Google's Android, one of the two dominant smartphone platforms in the United States. As of May 2013, according to a recent Pew Research Center [report on smartphone ownership](http://pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/internet/Reports/2013/Smartphone-Ownership-2013/Findings.aspx#footnote1), 25% of all U.S. cellphone owners-- and 43% of smartphone owners -- own an iPhone, a few percentage points behind Android. Other smartphone platforms -- Microsoft's Windows Phone, the fading BlackBerry, the handful of Palms still in use -- are far behind.

There had been smartphones before Apple launched its first-generation iPhone on June 29, 2007 (the Simon Personal Communicator from IBM had a [brief, unsuccessful life](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-06-29/before-iphone-and-android-came-simon-the-first-smartphone#p1) in the mid-1990s), but the iPhone's big touchscreen, ability to add apps and overall usability are widely credited with making smartphones mass consumer items.

![](https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2013/06/FT_13.06.29_IphoneAnniversary_02.png)

The Pew Research survey found that more-affluent and more-educated people are much more likely than those with less income and education to say they own an iPhone. Indeed, fully half—49%—of cellphone owners with household incomes of $150,000 or more say their phone is an iPhone, as do 38% of owners with college degrees.

And while Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites were about as likely to say they owned an iPhone as an Android phone, only 16% of black cellphone owners said they went with Apple, versus 42% who said their phone was an Android.