U.S. market research firm Nielsen recently released a report summarizing mobile consumption trends across major countries. In terms of smartphone penetration, the countries with relatively high smartphone penetration included South Korea (67%), China (66%), Australia (65%), Italy (62%) and the U.K. (61%) and the U.S. (53%). We note that China according to this report boasts a higher smartphone penetration rate than the U.S.A
Smartphone-based activities
Text messaging/SMS remained the most popular activity on smartphones in China, representing an 84% penetration rate, followed by web browsing (75%), application usage (71%), instant messaging (67%), social networking (62%), streaming music (59%), etc. In the U.S., text messaging and web browsing were also the two most popular activities on smartphones, representing penetration rates of 86% and 82%, respectively. U.S. smartphone users meanwhile preferred using email (75% vs. 58% in China), while Chinese users tended to leverage instant messaging services far more often (67% vs. 28% in the U.S.)
Chinese users tend to watch mobile video more frequently than U.S. users
The mobile web and mobile apps saw equal penetration rates (72%) amongst U.S. smartphone users when they were watching mobile videos. In China, mobile web was also the most popular means of watching mobile videos, representing a 74% penetration rate, while apps boasted lower acceptance among Chinese smartphone users than U.S. users, representing only a 49% penetration rate. However, Chinese mobile video viewers seemed to be far more used to viewing video on mobile than U.S. users. Roughly 37% of viewers watched mobile videos more than twice in a day, while in the U.S., the percentage was only 9%.
Mobile Advertising
Mobile advertising seemed to be more common in China than in other countries. According to Nielsen, China topped all countries surveyed in terms of mobile advertising penetration in online games (32%), LBS (19%), mobile videos (30%) and streaming online music/radio (27%).