Last year, slew of high-end smartphones were launched by variant vendors across the world. Apparently, 700.1 million smartphones were sold in 2012, up from 490.5 million a year ago. Furthermore, there would be 1.4 billion active smartphones by the end of this year. As number of smartphones are ramping up day-over-day, we have tried to find out worldwide smartphone consumers behavior in 2012. We have considered 11 countries namely USA, UK, UAE, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, China, Brazil, Austria  and Australia for our study.
It has been noticed that majority of smartphone users (nearly 50%) accessed internet multiple times in a day. The percentage of such users was quite high in the U.S., U.K.,U.A.E. and Japan. However, the proportion of smartphone users, accessing internet multiple times in a day, dropped in Japan last year, from 68% in 2011. In addition, the proportion of users, those accessed internet 2-3 times in days was also impressive in the last year; 33% of smartphone users in China accessed internet 2-3 times in a day.
Web-accessing on mobile devices has become one of the hottest trends this time, and this is the reason why majority of marketers are currently aggressive to optimize their websites for mobile platforms. Still, considerable number of users in China and France aren’t satisfied with browsing websites on their smartphones. However, the proportion of users, those are satisfied or completely satisfied with browsing websites on smartphones, was eye-catching in the countries such as the U.S., U.K., U.A.E., Japan and Germany in 2012.
Now, smartphone users often make purchases through their mobile devices. We have already discussed mobile shopping during the last holiday season which reached to its all time highest. Besides, online spending in the last holiday season surpassed even $1 billion figure in a single day, thanks to incredible participation of smartphone in purchases. It’s interesting to know, among all mobile payments modes, users still prefer credit/debit card for mobile shopping. More importantly, in 2012, 75% and 72% smartphone users in the U.A.E. and U.K. respectively did mobile shopping via credit/debit card mode of payments. However, mode of payments like PayPal and Direct Debit are also getting momentum in the developed markets such as the U.S.A. and U.K..
Source: Ipsos, Mobile Marketing Association
