Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Mobile Browser Market Share

6) Mobile-only Web users

Many mobile Web users are mobile-only, i.e. they do not, or very rarely also use a desktop, laptop or tablet to access the Web, according to On Device Research.
• In many developing nations, the majority of mobile Web users are mobile-only, highest include Egypt at 70 percent and India at 59 percent. • In many developing nations, the mobile-only tend to be under 25.
• In developed nations, including the US at 25 percent, a large minority of mobile Web users are mobile-only. • In developed nations, in the US particularly, many mobile-only are older people and many come from lower income households
• In Africa the 85 percent of the mobile-only Web users access the Web with a feature phone. • In Africa the top mobile activities for mobile-only users are: downloading games (55 percent); downloading music (54 percent); social networking (52 percent); search (48 percent); email (46 percent).
• Many mobile-only Web users do not have a bank account, in India this is 57 percent of the mobile-only.
• mobiThinking note: The best thing about these stats is that they are generated by m-research. On Device Research has recruited panelists of 1,000+ panelists in each target country that answer questions on mobile via the mobile Web.

Further reading::

• Using mobile Web-based research to deliver insights into the mobile-only generation.
• Guide to m-research.

Percentage of mobile Web users who never or infrequently use the desktop Web
Country	Percentage mobile-only	Country	Percentage mobile-only
Egypt	70%	Indonesia	44%
India	59%	Thailand	32%
South Africa	57%	China	30%
Ghana	55%	US	25%
Kenya	54%	UK	22%
Nigeria	50%	Russia	19%
Source: On Device Research (December 2010)		Survey group: 15,204	via: mobiThinking

6b) In Kenya, 99 percent of Internet connections are mobile. There are 6.5 million Internet subscriptions in total and 6.4 million of those are mobile. It should be noted that this isn’t just access via mobile phones, but also PCs via 3G modems. Mobile Web subscriptions are growing at 69 percent year-on-year. In a country where mobile phone subscriptions outnumber fixed lines 107:1, there can be little doubt that the future of Web is mobile. (CCK, July 2012).

Further reading::
• The insider’s guide to mobile Web and marketing in Kenya 2012.

7) Internet-ready mobile handsets

In 2011 over 85 percent of new handsets will be able to access the mobile Web. Today in US and Western Europe, 90 percent of mobile subscribers have an Internet-ready phone.
• There is a popular misconception that only smartphones can access the mobile Web. Fortunately this is far from the truth. Between 31 and 32 percent of handsets shipped in 2011 were smartphones (smartphone penetration will actually be lower than this), according to IDC, Strategy Analytics and Gartner
See: for all the latest mobile stats on mobile subscribers, handset and smartphone share.
• Gartner (March 2010) predicts that in 2011, over 85 percent of handsets shipped globally will include some form of browser.
• In mature markets, such as Western Europe and Japan, approximately 60 percent of handsets shipped will be smartphones with sophisticated browsing capabilities.
• In mature markets, the mobile Web, along with associated Web adaptation tools, will be a leading technology for business to consumer (B2C) mobile applications through 2012, and should be part of every organization's B2C technology portfolio.
• comScore (February 2011) estimates that 90 percent of mobile subscribers in US and Western Europe have a phone that can access the mobile Web. 48 percent of US and 61 percent of W. Europeans have a handset with an HTML browsers (this proportion is increasing fast), the rest have WAP browsers.
• ComScore notes that there are more than 60 different types/versions of mobile browser in use on mobile handsets. This makes mobile Web design more complicated than desktop Web design.
• dotMobi (July 2011) – mobiThinking’s parent company – estimates that there are 6,500 distinct Web-capable mobile devices models out there – that’s ignoring devices that only vary in color or phones that have be renamed/relabeled by operators etc. The majority of these are not smartphones. The specifications/features of these devices vary massively, screen sizes particularly.
• ABI Research (July 2011) predicts that 2.1 billion mobile devices will have HTML5 browsers by 2016 (up from 109 million in 2010). HTML5 will help to deliver a richer, more interactive mobile Web experience, including being able to play video without needing a plug such as the Adobe Flash Player.
• mobiThinking note on smartphones and HTML browsers: just because people may be able to view your PC Website with a mobile device with an HTML browser, doesn’t mean it is a pleasant or fulfilling experience. However big the device’s screen is, viewing a PC Website requires scrolling left and right and up and down. Don’t forget that most web-enabled phones are not smartphones and have much smaller screens. However good the mobile connection, large images will be slow to load. Many technologies commonly used on PC sites, such as Flash, do not work, or work well, on many handsets, including Apple. What’s more, mobile users have different requirements from desktop Web users and provide different opportunities for your business.

• For more on HTML5 see these video interviews: Why HTML5 changes everything – Dimitrios Kontarinis, VP of innovation, Velti and Meeting the needs of mobile customers with mobile Web/HTML5 – Stephen Gates, Starwood Hotels
• For more on why your site needs to identify and react to mobile visitors see this Guide to device detection.

8) 3G or 4G network coverage

45 percent of the world’s population is now covered by a 3G mobile network (required for fast mobile Internet access), according to The ITU (2011).
• 3G networks are now been launched in 159 countries. Some countries such as Sweden, Norway, Ukraine and United States are already moving to 4G.
• Ericsson (June 2012) forecasts that, by 2017, 85 percent of the world’s population will be covered by high-speed mobile networks. These networks will mostly be based on WCDMA/HSPA. LTE will be available at the high-end (led by deployments in the US, Korea, Japan and Western Europe).
• Almost 60 percent of operators plan to launch LTE-based services in 2012 (33.7 percent) or 2013 (24.9 percent), according to a survey of mobile operators by Informa (May 2012). LTE, sometimes called 4G (forth-generation), networks allow increased download and upload speeds and faster response times, in particular for data-intensive services such as video.
• The world’s largest LTE operators are Verizon Wireless (US), NTT DoCoMo (Japan) and AT&T (US), but lack of smartphone that support LTE, today, is preventing LTE becoming truly mass-market.
• Strategy Analytics (May 2012) predicts that LTE will account 90 million mobile connections in 2012, led by US, South Korea and Japan. LTE will rise sharply to one billion connections by 2017, when it will comprise 15 percent of all mobile connections.

9) Cost of data and the unlimited data plans

9a) Mobile data usage is expected to grow 20-fold by 2017, as cost per megabyte continues to fall, according to Portio Research.

Cost per megabyte (MB) of mobile data (worldwide in US$) v Monthly mobile data traffic per smartphone user (worldwide in MB).
	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2015
Cost/MB (US$)	0.46	0.19	0.10	0.06	0.03	0.01
MB/month/smartphone	149.0	323.1	527.9	736.3	1,041.5	3,390.7
Source: Portio Research					via: mobiThinking

9b) More widespread availability of unlimited data plans has helped the US overtake and extend its lead in mobile media use (mobile Web, apps, content downloads etc) over Western Europe.
• ComScore (Feb 2011) finds that where there are now 29 percent of US subscribers have unlimited plans, there are only 8 percent in the EU5 (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain). ComScore does not provide comparable data for Japan, where mobile media penetration is 75 percent dwarfing both the US and EU5.
• But Infinita estimates that 75 percent of Japanese are on unlimited plans (it was first introduced in 2004), while over 95 percent have 3G handsets. In this Guide to Japan, Infinita states that penetration of unlimited data is the main reason mobile Web in Japan is so advanced.

Mobile Market Enablers in the U.S and W. Europe, Q4 2010, according to ComScore
Country	Unlimited data plans	Smartphone penetration	3G/4G handset ownership	Mobile media usage
US	29%	27%	50%	47%
W.Europe (EU5)	8%	31.1%	47.1%	37%
Japan				75%
Source: ComScore (February 2011)		Survey group: 27,000		via: mobiThinking

• mobiThinking note: the sharp rise in data usage (often down to the activities of a minority of customers) and impact on network performance has led to network operators – such as AT&T – revising their policies on unlimited data contracts.

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“We're also seeing a huge positive revenue impact from Mobile, which has grown 2.5 times in the last 12 months to a run rate of over $2.5 billion.” Larry Page, CEO, Google.
“Let's turn to mobile advertising. Larry mentioned $2.5 billion as a run rate. Our revenue growth continues to accelerate even in Mobile, driven primarily by mobile search… Many advertisers have greatly increased the size and frequency of their mobile campaigns. Mobile is becoming a must-have. This includes clients like InterContinental Hotels Group, which spans pretty much across our entire portfolio of properties, including Mobile search, Mobile GDN and AdMob.” Nikesh Arora, SVP, Google. Q3 2011 Earnings Call October, 2011

• There are 200 million mobile video playbacks every day on YouTube – YouTube internal data.

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FINDING YOUR WAY AROUND THE MOBILE STATS COMPENDIUM:
Home: Full index of contents and highlights • Section A: Mobile subscribers; handset share • Section B: Mobile Web; 3G • Section C: Mobile marketing, advertising and messaging • Section D: Consumer mobile behavior • Section E: Mobile apps, app stores • Section F: Mobile payment, NFC, m-commerce, m-ticketing and m-coupons • Section G: Mobile financial services (MFS) and m-banking • Section H: VC investment in mobile.

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