I’ve been all over this new Pew Internet & American Life Project report entitled “A Typology of Informatio and Communication Technology Users.”

Conducted with the cooperation of 5,129 Americans, the survey divided respondents and their receptivity to/use of technology into three general segments: Technology elites (31 percent); Middle of the Road Users (20 percent) and Low Tech and Non Users (49 percent).

Although almost all the elites, many of the middle of the road-ers and some low techs indicated they used cell phones and other mobile devices, a subset of the Middles is the most interesting for our purposes. That’d be the mobile-Centrics.

Representing some 10 percent of the overall respondent base, these are folks who are heavy cellphone users, are on the Internet as a secondary means of communication, but don’t have enhanced interest in learning about and using enhanced technologies that aren’t available via their mobile devices.

Now, for the demographics. Pew says the average age of this group is 32, is 52-48% men, includes African Americans at a greater percentage than the U.S. population (21%-14%) abd have only been online for an average six years.

I’d guess that relatively brief stay says why this group is statistically less likely to live in the traditional, desktop and laptop online world, and conduct so much of their communications and fun activities via their cell as platform of choice.

And for them, mobile is both functional and cool. Not necessarily in that order, though.

“What this group does have is cell phones (100% in our sample), and they have a lot of
functionality on their phones,” writes the report’s main author, Pew Internet & American Life Project’s Associate Director for Research John Horrigan. “The Mobile Centrics trail only Omnivores on measures ofcell phone capacity; fully 88% have a cell phone that can play a game, and 72% have a cell phone that can surf the internet. More than half (60%) have a cell phone that can take pictures, which is above the average of 28% among cell phone users. Four in ten (40%) have a cell phone that can play music.”

Horrigan notes that when it comes to what they do on their cell, texting and gaming rule. Seeing texters and phone gamers all around me, I’m not surprised-though I will admit that I would have thought cell gamers would have skewed a little younger.

“Fully 94% of the Mobile Centrics have sent or received text-messages on their cell phone,” writes Horrigan in citing the Pew numbers. “Nearly half (54%) rely on their cell
phones for most of their calls (compared with the 39% average) and 13% have taken
digital photos with their cell phones.”

I have to believe that once these photos are taken, they are sent to user’s friends from their phone.

Handset-based email is a primary means for messaging these photos off the phone and either to other cell users or traditional email platforms.

No wonder then, that 55% of Mobile Centrics say it would be “very hard” to do without their cell phones. Presumably this high percentage is due to the combination of functionality and cool that today’s handsets provide.

Of course enthusiastic texters, gamers, etc., aren’t limited to Mobile Centrics. It’s only that this is the group whose communications revolve around the cell, as opposed to other devices and platforms.

Important for us to compare the 55% “very hard to do without their cell phones to:

Do without the Internet? 25% said yes.

Do without traditional email? 21% said yes.