US, UK young women smartphone buyers

Dec 22, 2010 by Dirk Singer

Research firm Nielsen has come out with a report ‘A Global View of Cellphones and Youth’, which shows that 33% of young American adults and 36% of their British counterparts own smartphones. The stats also show that both Spain (38%) and Italy (47%) lead in smartphone penetration among 15-24 year olds.

At the same time, the UK is only second to the US when it comes to female ownership of smartphones. Among young adults, the UK, close to half (47%) of smartphones are owned by women. In the US it is actually well over half (55%). Compare that to Germany where 2/3 (66%) of young smartphone owners are men.

Research from both Ofcom in the UK and Pew in the US show that 15-24 year olds have a significantly different relationship with their mobiles than older adults.

In the US Pew found that for 30 and 40 somethings, the PC is more important than the cell phone, while for 20 somethings it is the other way around. This mirrors what Ofcom found – in the UK among 16-24 year olds, the mobile phone was seen as more of a necessity than PCs + Internet.

In all markets Nielsen surveyed except Russia, price was the main purchase driver. Which shows that while young adults may want an iPhone, very often they will gravitate to an Android phone.

Europe lags behind Japan, US in mobile Internet use

An infographic by Comscore shows that Japan is far ahead of the US and EU in mobile Internet use.

According to Comscore, 3/4 (75.2%) of Japanese mobile phone users browsed the Internet, accessed applications or downloaded content. This compares to 43.7% of Americans and 38.5% of Europeans.

Facebook is the top mobile social media brand in both the EU and US, while in both markets Twitter is no.4. However, with the exception of Twitter, Japanese mobile users prefer a completely different set of social networks.