Six countries are the leaders in smartphone adoption
Google with the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), a global trade association for the mobile industry, yesterday announced the launch of an updated version of ‘Our Mobile Planet’, a mobile consumer data resource that provides free access to powerful data across 40 countries in 22 languages.
“Understanding the mobile consumer is absolutely critical for marketers, and ‘Our Mobile Planet’ puts an invaluable resource in their hands,” said Greg Stuart, Global CEO of the MMA. “Users can create custom charts that will help them to analyze smartphone consumer behaviour and support data-driven decision making. We’re proud to have played a role in collecting the initial data for the project, and to have taken part in today’s re-launch.”
Originally launched at the MMA Forum in London in October of 2011, ‘Our Mobile Planet’ provides users with free access to the data from the unique smartphone research conducted across 40 markets worldwide by Google in collaboration with Ipsos MediaCT and the MMA. For the re-launch, conducted with Ipsos, the IAB and the MMA, Google commissioned Ipsos to conduct new research on smartphone Internet users across 26 countries in Q1 2012. The updated research is available on the new site, thinkwithgoogle.co.uk/mobileplanet, and also provides full data downloads and executive summary reports for each country in the 2012 research.
So which six countries have the highest smartphone adoption? “Our Mobile Planet” reports that Australia, the UK, Sweden, Norway, Saudi Arabia and the UAE all have more than 50 per cent of their population on smartphones. An additional seven countries - the US, New Zealand, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland - now have more than 40 per cent smartphone penetration.
“That the majority of these countries are in the EMEA region is exciting and confirms that mobile is making immense gains in Europe and the Middle East,” says Paul Berney, MMA CMO and Managing Director for EMEA. “These figures also point to a burgeoning global mobile movement as smartphone adoption grows exponentially worldwide, and send a strong message to marketers that they need to make mobile an indispensable part of their marketing mix.”