April 8th, 2008 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Research & Stats | No Comments »
According to fresh M:Metrics research, the iPhone hype is still standing strong. With 85% of the owners using the device for browsing the internet, it’s an interesting consumer base.
"The iPhone has certainly delivered on its hype,” said Mark Donovan, senior analyst, M:Metrics. “Beyond a doubt, this device is compelling consumers to interact with the mobile Web, delivering off-the-charts usage from everything to text messaging to mobile video.”
30.9% uses the iPhone for watching video or TV vs. the 4.6% market average. 49.7% uses the iPhone for social networking, which is nearly twelve times more than the market average. The research also showed that one of the first priorities for an iPhone owner is to customize it’s content.
“This data indicates that the iPhone’s widgets are and effective means to drive mobile content consumption,” observed Donovan. “Two featured widgets, YouTube and Google Maps are extremely popular among iPhone users: 30.4 percent accessed YouTube and 36 percent used Google Maps. In comparison, only one percent of all mobile subscribers accessed YouTube and 2.6 percent checked out Google Maps.”
When it comes to mobile games, in the US, 9% of the iPhone owners downloaded and/or played a mobile game. For the UK, this was set at 10.4%. Spain is the leading market for gaming on the iPhone as 12.3% played or downloaded mobile games.
“While the demographics of iPhone users are very similar to all smartphone owners, the iPhone is outpacing other smartphones in driving mobile content consumption by a significant margin,” said Donovan. “In addition to the attributes of the device itself, another important factor to consider is the fact that all iPhones on AT&T are attached to an unlimited data plan. Our data shows that once the fear of surprise data charges is eliminated, mobile content consumption increases dramatically, regardless of device.”
