UsageWatch.org

At the beginning of 2005, China counted 340M mobile phone subscribers (or 26% of the total population). This represents 63M new subscribers in a year, and the single largest mobile market in the world.

Source, Ministry of Information Industry of China (2005) via emarketer The wireless market in China: vast and varied (24-05-05).

Reuters Don't ground teen, confiscate the mobile phone (06-05-05) reports on a study by Cheil Communications, a South-Korean advertsing firm, which shows that for 77% of young Koreans, between 13 and 18 years of age, the cell-phone is a must-have item. They would feel helpless without a mobile and cut out from their friends.

For the past few months, I've been collecting evidence about adoption of home networking, and in particular installed base and attitudes. The evidence I found indicates that home networking is progressing extremely slowly, and doesn't seem to be the natural next step after connecting the home to the Internet with a broadband access.

Two analysts (Diffusion Group and In-Stat) estimate the number of networked homes worldwide to be in the 40M range (respectively 35M in 2004; 50M estimated in 2005). And make forecasts of 162M in 2010 and 200M in 2009, invoking:

growth fuelled by broadband service providers who are beginning to push combined modem networking solutions (RGWs)

In general however, home network penetration remains relatively low even in countries with high broadband penetration such as South Korea (2%), Germany (2%), UK (10%), Japan (16%), US (17%). The US number is corroborated by Forrester Getting home networking into second gear (5-01-05), which speaks of 19% of online households with home network.

Attitudes and motivations related to networking the home are analysed, for the US, in a Harris Interactive Survey (October 2004) of online households (n=699). In the sample, 20% of households have a home network, the main reason being to share a broadband connection, followed by a printer and files.  Those who do not own one consider that they have no need for one. Also price, poor knowledge of the gear, uncertainty about their ability to set the network up are among the reasons invoked more frequently.

A third piece of evidence to understand adoption of home networking comes from Forrester Trends Laptops and home networks transform behaviour (27-05-05), which finds that households with home networks and laptops have a significantly more intense Internet life (spend more time online (+66% than average household), and do more of all online activities), use the Internet from everywhere in the house, and watch less TV.

Forrester surveyed 12.155 NorthAmerican households in December 2004.

PCs are powerful multipurpose devices. They are archives, players, editing and publishing tools. When put in use, however, they serve to play games, to listen to music, to enjoy photos and video with a focus on at most two domains. Few are the people who listen to music and share memories or produce videos. This is what emerges from Forrester Moving beyond a one-size-fits-all consumer PC (17-05-05).

The survey reveals that the most frequent leisure activities are: play games (53%); share memories (13%); produce videos (12%); listen to music (8%); TV (6%). Less than one in ten households carry out more than two activities.

The data comes from Forrester's Benchmark Survey of 60.010 North American households. 

Asked to rate various mobile services delivering multimedia contents, adolescents and young adults between 13 and 34 years old expressed most interest for commercial-free radio (40%, of the 1.000 mobile phone users surveyed) and music downloads (35%). Concerning pricing:

Paul Petersky, TMNG's vice-president of market research, said that survey respondents preferred the idea of paying 99 cents per song for music downloads rather than $19.95 monthlly for up to 30 song downloads.

Looking at video-based services, the survey found stronger interest for free ad-supported mobile video service (40%) as opposed to monthly subscriptions (of $4) or pay per video clip (30 cents) (less than 20% are very or extremely likely).

And looking at multiplayer video games, the survey found that 21% of respondents were very interested, mostly teenage respondents.

The research was carried out in early 2005 by The Network Management Group - via Reuters Young mobile users most interested in music-survey (26-05-05).

Surveying electronic devices ownership among girls and boys between 8 and 18 years of age, the Kaiser Family Foundation (March 2005) - via eMarketer, 29-06-05 - found some clear gender differences.

Whereas girls and boys are equally likely to own a portable CD/tape player (61%), a PDA (11%) and a laptop (girls 11%; boys 14%), more girls own a cellphone (42% vs 35%) while more boys own handheld video games (63% vs 48%) and MP3 players (21% vs 14%).

The Los Angeles Time - via eMarketer, 29-06-05 - reports the story of 15 year-old Will who on average spends 5.5 hours daily on his mobile phone.

Sometimes he talked, sometimes he listened. But most of the time, the 15 year-old just dialed a friend and left the phone on. Connected only by wireless headsets. Will and his pal spent entire days - together, but apart - shopping, snacking, doing homework and even nodding off to sleep.

SKYPE users describe similar behaviours of ambient telecommunication.

In India, 2 in 10.000 people have a broadband Internet connection. On the the other hand, in South Korea, the most high-speed networked country in the world, 1 in 4 people have a broadband connection, from Reuters Dishnet aims for India-wide WiFi coverage in two years (04-05-05)

The Forrester report What it will take to reach PC have-nots (17-06-05) analyses the attitudes and motivations of the 15 M North-American households (corresponding to 32% of all households) who don't own a PC, but on the other hand, have a TV set (98% do) and a telephone (94% do).

A little more that half of them (53%) are open to the idea of having a PC were PCs less expensive; set up and training were provided; PCs were truly valuable; Internet access were free. The study shows a correlation between lower (than average) income households and price and assistance conditions; and between higher income and benefit condition.

(Findings are based on the December 2004 Consumer Technographics study of 60.000 US and Canadian households)

According to the Computer Industry Almanac (March 2005), at the end of 2004 there were 822,15M PCs in use worldwide.

This table describes their geographical distribution. By far, the largest number of PCs in use is in the US (223,81 M, or 27.22% of the total). This is more than three times the number of PCs in Japan, the second largest nation per number of PCs. The number of PCs in use is significantly increasing in China, Brazil, Russia and India.

One out of four PCs is a laptop (24% of total), and close to one out of three in the US.