Adoption and Applications
According to industry analyst Chetan Sharma, President of Chetan Sharma Consulting, “When comparing markets, some analysts generally look at only one factor mobile subscriber penetration. However, the picture is more complicated than that and it is better to take a look at the analysis holistically.” That makes it important to consider the availability of similar products and services, and how those options affect the adoption of other products. For example, the high penetration of mobile broadband in Japan and Korea is partly attributable to wireless being the cheapest, most widely available means of high speed Internet access in those countries. In the U.S., by contrast, Sharma notes “Because of the heavy penetration of the Internet over the desktop, as well as the late advent of 3G in the market, there was not a big driver for mobile Internet until the last one or two years. As 3G penetration has been increasing and now we’re up to 15 to 16 percent penetration (in the U.S.) we’re seeing that a lot of people are getting used to . . . the capability of Smartphones and phones like the iPhone” and “saying ‘oh, I can actually do some browsing on my cellphone.’”
Kanishka Agarwal, Vice President, Mobile Media, for Telephia, agrees that U.S. consumers’ experience with the traditional Internet and other products have been a factor in the takeup of mobile Internet in the U.S. But, he notes, “When you think about Internet, video and games, penetration of use in Europe versus the U.S., the difference is certainly narrowing Europe is one to two percent penetration higher, that’s about it.”
Agarwal points out that “In the U.S., 15 percent of subscribers actively use mobile Internet on a regular basis every 30 days, in Europe it is about 18 percent.” Likewise, a mobile video market is now emerging in the U.S. and elsewhere. Agarwal says, “Video is actually rather small right now, four or five percent in the U.S. and Europe as well. When you look at games, it is about 9 or 10 percent in both the U.S. and Europe.”
M:Metrics - which conducts an on-going survey of thousands of wireless customers in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK, and the U.S. – recently found that a slightly higher percentage of U.S. consumers browse wirelessly for news and information than their European counterparts. M:Metrics reports finding that users of the mobile web in Europe and the U.S. show pretty consistent interests in the nature of their browsing, with the exception of a greater interest in sports among European women, while American women appear to be more interested in accessing weather-related information via wireless.
