WASHINGTON — Smartphone and tablet penetration has reached record levels in the U.S., and people are gobbling up an incredible amount of data by using them.
The Washington-based wireless industry association trade group CTIA says Americans used 9.6 trillion megabytes of data in 2015, more than double the previous year and three times the data used by U.S. consumers in 2013.
CTIA says there were more than 228 million smartphones in use by 70 percent of the U.S. population last year. And there were more than 41 million tablets on wireless networks, up 16 percent from 2014.
Americans exchanged more than 2.1 trillion texts, videos and photo messages last year — more than four million every minute.
CTIA says wireless carriers invested $32 million in 2015, including activation of nearly 10,000 new cell sites.
Despite all that data, people are using their phones for phone calls: Americans talked more than 2.8 trillion minutes on their mobile phones last year, up 17 percent from 2014.
