Only 10 percent of the Russian populace, most of them senior citizens, own no mobile phones, according to a poll by Levada Center released on Tuesday.
Only 2 percent of the phone-less fall into the age bracket 25-39, while for those over 55, the figure is 21 percent, the survey said.
In 2006, the year when the annual poll was first taken, only 56 percent of the total populace had cell phones, while last year, the figure was 87 percent.
Twenty-one percent of the people polled in 2012 said they own more than one cell phone, Levada said on its website. The total number of cellphones in the country of 141 million stood at 224 million units last year, according to the Moscow-based agency Advanced Communications & Media Consulting.
Nokia and Samsung remained the most popular brands in Russia with 41 and 32 percent of the populace, respectively, using their phones. Nokia is especially popular in the capital, while Samsung was preferred in smaller localities, as well as among the less well-off.
The Levada poll was held in mid-March and covered 1,600 respondents nationwide. It had a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points.
