Google outs web usage, smartphone stats by country
updated 05:45 pm EST, Wed January 25, 2012
Google polls smartphone users in five countries
Google has released stats related to mobile web and smartphone use/ownership this week. Performed by research firm Ipsos MediaCT, the surveys polled 2,000 residents from each country that were said to represent the population. The results show the UK leads in terms of smartphone use, with 45 percent of the population owning one.
France and the US were tied for second, at 38 percent, while Germany is at 23 percent and Japan, surprisingly, last at just 17 percent.
The studies were taken at the start of 2011 and near the end, to show growth as well. The UK smartphone owners grew from 30 percent to 45 percent in that time period, with feature phone owners decreasing from 57 to 43 percent. Japan went from 6 to 17 percent in the smartphone category.
Tablets, meanwhile, account for 17 percent of smartphone owners in the US, 11 percent in Japan and 10 percent in the UK.
In terms of portable games consoles, Japan is far and away the leader, at 38 percent versus second-best UK at 15 percent. The ownership of these devices is the only one that dropped between the first and second polls across all five countries.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Dec 2010
Are these stats accurate?
How come your survey finds that smartphone penetration in these countries is so much higher than global smartphone penetration? I realize that these are rich countries, but even so it’s pretty difficult to grasp how smartphone penetration can be as high as 38% in the US or 45% in the UK.
Handset sales according to IDC, Strategy Analytics and Canalys show that there were 1,546 billion mobile handsets sold in 2011, of those 491.4 million or 32 percent were smartphones. And that’s sales – market penetration will be much much lower. There are 5.981 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide, so only 25% or so of people changed their phone in 2011. Even when you add all the smartphones sold in 2009, 2010 and 2011, you only get 968.2 million smartphones… let’s pretend that these are all still in use and there’s no duplication (i.e. smartphone replacing smartphone), then that’s still only 16 percent of global mobile subscriptions.
All the numbers are here: http://mobithinking.com/blog/2011-handset-and-smartphone-sales-big-picture
Similarly the market share of Tablets in the US is unrealistically high. 17% of the US population is 52 million. There were only 63.2 million tablets sold in total worldwide in 2011.
The other thing I thought was weird is that you only asked if people used their smartphone to access the Web. It would be more interesting to know how many people with all mobile phones (plenty of feature phones access the Web also) access the Web. Anyone who isn’t using a smartphone to access the Web shouldn’t have one – it’s a total waste of money.