Ageinplacetech iconAgeinplacetechAug 12, 2026 ~1 min source read

Does AI help with validating a market opportunity?

Now we get an 'AI result' – that is termed an 'AI overview.' How about what percent of people aged 75+ own smartphones? AARP tries annually to quantify technology ownership trends, including smartphone ownership – but that can be even more misleading.

Does AI help with validating a market opportunity?

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Now we get an 'AI result' – that is termed an 'AI overview.' How about what percent of people aged 75+ own smartphones?

AARP tries annually to quantify technology ownership trends, including smartphone ownership – but that can be even more misleading.

Again Google offers a number: 125 million, so AARP's assertion is that 90% of them own smartphones – thus no market opportunity to sell that device to them.

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The useful part

Now we get an 'AI result' – that is termed an 'AI overview.' How about what percent of people aged 75+ own smartphones? AARP tries annually to quantify technology ownership trends, including smartphone ownership – but that can be even more misleading. Again Google offers a number: 125 million, so AARP's assertion is that 90% of them own smartphones – thus no market opportunity to sell that device to them.

How it works

  • That probably explains why Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile all offer basic phones.
  • All are based on surveys of subsets of people, fielded at various times over the past few years.

Details worth keeping

Worth a try – ask a question with a quantifiable result. The answer – 31% in 'foundational benchmarks'. Guess it presumed I wanted that 9-year-old number.

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