Google has released the result of a study carried out by a research firm, Ipsos MediaCT, which as commissioned by Google. The study was carried out on 2000 residents each from the following five countries: US, UK, Germany, France and Japan. The study reveals that the trend of smartphones and tablets is increasing in all five countries, with UK on the lead followed by both France and US in overall smartphone use. However, while smartphones and tablets come en vogue, PCs are not experiencing any decrease in their usage, something which was predicted by many experts.
According to the details revealed by the study, UK is leading the overall smartphone usage with 45 percent at the helm. This is closely followed by France and USA, each of which stands at 38 percent. However, these figures are not the same as predicted by some other studies which suggest that US is the one leading the overall smartphone usage.
Feature phones, which were once the rage in the world of mobile and wireless, are fast being eroded by smartphones. Japan has conventionally been the stronghold of feature phones, with many Japanese companies producing some of the best feature phones worldwide. But even they are taken a backseat as Japanese take to smartphones. Over the last year, the smartphone usage in Japan has surged from 6 to 17 percent and is expected to grow at an even faster pace in the coming days. This may spell the end of ride for feature phones.
The study also reveals that PCs are not witnessing any reduction in their usage. Analysts had speculated that with the growth of smartphones and tablets usage, the PC usage will diminish greatly. But interestingly, the PC usage has stood these rivals and continues to be firm across all the five surveyed countries.
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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-pictureSimilarly 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.