The Luxury institute, a US website that is “… the objective and independent global voice of the high net-worth consumer”, is a thing that apparently exists. It has released a Wealth Survey that reveals the smartphone habits of those earning at least $150,000. The results are…underwhelming.

Photo courtesy Peter Curbishley flickr

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The obscure yachting app ‘Facebook’ topped the list, with most downloaded apps being related to weather, news, travel, business/finance and sports. Angry Birds and Words with Friends also stood out as favourites. In other words, the wealthy use their iPhones exactly the same as everyone else.

More relevant is the breakdown of hardware; 45% use the iPhone, 35% use an Android handset, and 25% use a Blackberry. That’s suggesting that out of an impressive 105% of rich smartphone users, none of them use Windows Phone. Even though one assumes Bill Gates himself was surveyed.

To be fair, this suggests that most wealthy smartphone users are still tethered to enterprise Blackberries, while they use a Droid or iPhone for their personal lives. In the non-rich world, the numbers are roughly reversed for iPhone and Android. This, coupled with other surveys which demonstrate that Android now dominates some 50% of the US smartphone market, . iPhones make up 30% of the US smartphone market, but an astonishing 80% of the revenue. That’s all thanks to the App Store and iTunes.

Here in Australia, the results would likely be a little different. For one thing, iPhones work on all of our networks here, whereas in the US, it has mostly only been available on AT&T- a network with enough issues to scare off the jet-set. But thanks to low-cost Android phones, Android is enjoying similarly rapid growth in Australia.

Proving that the rich are cheapskates, only 18% would pay more than $5 for a mobile app, suggesting that most app developers themselves were not eligible for inclusion in this survey.