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UK leads in smartphone ownership


By - 27/1/12 print
UK leads in smartphone ownership
 

Smartphone ownership surges 15% in 2011 in the UK, according to Google.

If there was any doubt that Britain loves its mobile phones, it’s been dispelled by a new report by Google. According to the search giant, 45% of the population now owns a smartphone. What’s more, smartphone ownership in the UK grew 15% in 2011 alone.

Google partnered with research company Ipsos to run a study to find global consumer usage of smartphones. The study was run in the UK, US, France, Germany and Japan across two phases - the first in January and February 2011, and the second in September and October 2011.

The study found that more consumers are switching to snazzy smartphones in the UK than any other country. While ownership here is at 45%, the level of penetration in the US has reached 38%, 23% in Germany and 17% in Japan.

It also found that more and more people are using their phones to access the internet. It’s particularly common in Japan, where 88% of smartphone owners use the device to go online daily. The US is next, with 69% of owners connecting to the net daily through their handset. In the UK, 54% go online at least once a day - an increase of 4% from the start of last year, but it was Germany that saw the biggest leap in mobile browsing - from 39% to 49% in 2011.

Even though more of us are reaching for our phones when we want to go online, that doesn’t mean we’re abandoning computers. The survey found that across, all five countries, 75% of smartphone owners said they still use their PC or Mac to access the internet.

While smartphones surged in UK last year, the same can’t be said of tablet computers. Google found that only 10% of the population has a tablet like an Apple iPad or Samsung Galaxy Tab. Tablets are gaining more traction in the US, where 17% of the population have them, and Japan at 11%. The UK still leads Germany and France, where tablet penetration has only reached 8% of the population.

Google’s full report is available online now (PDF).

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