Extra, extra, read all about it on your iPhone: Mobile news is gaining fast

A convergence of factoids seems to point to something inevitable: the future of news delivery is on wireless devices, and those devices will be smartphones, much more than e-readers.

First, here’s data about the ubiquity of wireless as of the end of 2008, which is already nearly half a year ago, all from CTIA, “The Wireless Association” (what the initial actually stand for, I can’t figure out) (via Amy Gahran at Poynter):

• The U.S. has 270.3 wireless subscribers, which is the equivalent of 87 percent of the entire population. At the end of 2005 the penetration was just 69 percent. It looks like only centenarians and some of the sub-teen population are still cellphone-less.
• 17.5 percent of households are wireless-only and have no “land line” (one of those retro-formations, like “analog watch”). This is more than double the 2005 level of 8.4 percent.
• In 2008, we used our wireless phones for 2.2 trillion minutes, which is almost 50 percent more than during 2005.
• We sent 1 trillion SMS messages during 2008, which more than 10 times the 2005 level of 81 billion.

Now, at the cutting edge of all these wireless users are the smart-phone owners, and thanks to a study from gravitytank, we have some insights into them as well:

Read the rest of this post at NiemanLab.org