It’s no secret that more and more people use their smartphones as an extension of their hands—look around any public place and it won’t be long before you see someone with their head down, focusing on their BlackBerry® smartphone. Inbound Marketing Blog Hubspot® estimates that in the United States alone, smartphone users will number around 107 million in 2012 – roughly one-third of the population. And Reuters claims that global smartphone sales will top 1 billion units in 2014.

So, how are people using their smartphones? We curated research from industry sources and rounded up five reasons why people are grabbing their smartphones at home and at work:

1. Surfing the Web: For those of you surfing the digital cosmos via the BlackBerry Browser, you’re not alone. Hubspot estimates that the number of mobile internet users will reach 113.9 million in 2012.
2. SMS Text/BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) Messaging: Portio Research found that about 8 trillion SMS messages were sent in 2011, and they predict that number to grow to nearly 10 trillion by the end of 2012.
3. Socializing: A recent ComScore survey found that 70 percent of mobile users posted a status update to Twitter®, Facebook®, LinkedIn® or another social network via their smartphone in 2011.
4. Email: Another ComScore report states that 90 million Americans use their smartphone to access email, with 64 percent of those users accessing their email almost every day.
5. Gaming: Reports form several sources found that in 2011, about 1 in 3 smartphone users played games on their devices (that’s a lot of Angry Birds).

How many of these five examples describe your mobile life? I’m pretty much using my BlackBerry® Bold™ 9900 smartphone for all five of them – how about you?