Latest Annual Edition of TomiAhonen Almanac 2012 is now released. Lets share some data from it

The TomiAhonen Almanac 2012 has just been released. I just reviewed the big industry numbers for the mobile business yesterday, so lets take a few tidbits from the Almanac 2012 to celebrate its launch and show what kind of info it has.

First, what is the TomiAhonen Almanac 2012? Its an annual statistical review of the total mobile industry, from handsets to services, covering all from voice calls and SMS text messages to smartphone apps and mobile advertising to content types from music to gaming to social networking on mobile. It counts the subscribers, the traffic and the revenues globally and across eight regions of the planet. All the data is updated to January 1 of the year of the Almanac, ie now for January 1, 2012.




I had been giving statistical reviews of the industry in my presentations and on this blog for a long time. And often people would come back to me and ask for more and more. As this is the fastest-growing giant industry of all time (the mobile industry was commercially launched only 33 years ago, in 1979, and crossed the 1 Trillion dollar level in an amazing 29 years - a level never reached by most 'glamorous' tech and media industries like the computer industry, the internet, television, movies, radio, etc). Mobile has produced the richest person on the planet - Carlos Slim of America Movil - and the most valuable company of the world, Apple, which only became so after it ended calling itself Apple Computer, and now calls itself a 'mobile' company. Google the fastest-growing company ever from zero to Fortune 500 size, also says the future of the internet is mobile. But as this industry is so alluring, it is also remarkably complex. The numbers are diffult to find, and often contradictory. That is why I released my Almanac.

For example, in the mobile internet chapter I have 8 separate tables and charts to illustrate the various ways to measure 'mobile data' or 'mobile web' etc. One of the most popular charts from the Almanac is this Venn diagram which puts the legacy traditional PC based internet and the newer mobile phone based internet into context.




(you can click on the chart to see larger version of it)

From this table you can also easily see why its perfectly valid for one expert to say there are only 800 million people who use the mobile internet, and that number to be smaller than those who access the internet on a PC at 1.4 Billion (that view is valid) or for another expert to say that 1.8 Billion people access the internet on a mobile phone and those who only use a PC is down to 350 million (equally valid view). Part of the problem is that mid-ground in the Venn diagram, that 1.05 Billion people use both PC and mobile phones to access the internet, so how their use is attributed, will cause plenty of confusion. Thats just one of the 96 charts and tables in the TomiAhonen Almanac 2012

I also have perhaps the only table anywhere that puts all of the different measures next to each other, so you can see at one glance, what is the difference if you measure those who have a 'data plan' to access the internet (whether they use it or not), or if the users actually 'surf' internet content, or if they use 'the real internet' etc. Actually ten different measures of mobile data users, all valid, but based on different definitions, you get different results. In that chapter I go through each of the ten valid defintions, and count the results based on the definition - and then explain what other 'data' is out there that is not valid to answer the question.

I also wanted to keep it simple and accessable. Most of the people curious about mobile are not in the market to buy a 1,000 dollar industrial report about the mobile industry from one of the big analyst houses. It is total overkill and most don't have that kind of budgets. So I decided to keep this accessable and truly cheap, so the price is simply 9.99 Euros, something anyone can afford. The format is ebook, so you can download it immediately and have it stored on your laptop or iPad or smartphone. The pdf file is not crippled (your license is a single user license but you may make personal copies to your different devices) and best of all, the pages are formated for the small screen, so you really can have all the big numbers and stats in your pocket, accessable every day everywhere.

I then thought about what are the most important numbers and stats. The Almanac has evolved over the years but now runs 191 pages, has 96 tables and charts, and again added more information (three totally new charts added, one no longer relevant chart removed). Compared to the previous 2011 edition, all chapters have been revised and updated, and all existing charts and tables of course updated by a year. So this is the table of contents for 2012:

TOMIAHONEN ALMANAC 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1 - Intro
Chapter 2 - Size of Industry (8 tables & charts)
Chapter 3 - Customers (6 tables & charts)
Chapter 4 - Handsets (14 tables & charts)
Chapter 5 - Mobile Messaging (10 tables & charts)
Chapter 6 - Mobile Internet (8 tables & charts)
Chapter 7 - Seventh Mass Medium (7 tables & charts)
Chapter 8 - Music on Mobile (5 tables & charts)
Chapter 9 - Mobile TV and Video (4 tables & charts)
Chapter 10 - Mobile Gaming (4 tables & charts)
Chapter 11 - Mobile Social Networking (5 tables & charts)
Chapter 12 - Other Mobile Content (3 tables & charts)
Chapter 13 - Smartphone Apps (4 tables & charts)
Chapter 14 - Mobile Advertising and Marketing (5 tables & charts)
Chapter 15 - Voice Calls (2 tables & charts)
Chapter 16 - Business/Enterprise Services (1 tables & charts)
Chatper 17 - Other Mobile Data (0 tables & charts)
Chapter 18 - Network Infrastructure (1 tables & charts)
Chapter 19 - Digital Divide (3 tables & charts)
Chapter 20 - History and Milestones

TABLES SECTION
Index of Mobile Leadership (30 leading countries)
60 Major Countries Mobile Stats includes subscribers, penetration, uniques, networks, 3G and MVNO
25 Countries with Most Mobile Subscribers
25 Countries by Highest Mobile Penetration Rate
25 Countries by Highest 3G Penetration Rate
20 Biggest Mobile Operator Groups

Appendix


Thats a lot of data packed in 191 pages. For anyone new to mobile the TomiAhonen Almanac 2012 is the perfect place to start, before you then perhaps buy a specialized report in the industry you are in, whether smartphone apps or newsmedia or mobile payments etc. And I really intended it to be a resource for those who work in the industry, to have the critical data in your pocket. I literally use the Almanac several times every week to check up on specific data points myself. I cannot imagine my work without it and I wrote it haha.. It is that good. But don't take my word for it, this is what Russell Buckley ex-Google ex-Admob wrote about the Almanac: "Whenever I need a stat, Tomi seems to have it, so I'd highly recommend this Almanac for any aspiring mobile fact junkie."

Now, enough of the brochure, eh? I want to share some insights with you from the 2012 edition of the Almanac. Lets take some tidbits:

The Almanac offers regularly splits of the big data into more practical divisions. Sometimes it makes sense to see the data split by regions, I use 8 regions in the Almanac, so we have data by North America and Latin America, West Europe, East Europe, Advanced parts of Asia-Pacific and Emerging World parts of Asia, plus Africa, and the Middle East. These 8 regions tend to often have significant variances in matters from mobile subscriber penetration rates to smartphone adoption rates to various media consumption. And if Asia is grouped as one, it hides the advanced parts of Asia, which often leads Europe (and North America), in the giant numbers of China and India. So lets take one table here to illustrate:




(you can click on the chart to see larger version of it)

This is the table of the global mobile gaming revenues worldwide which reached $17.2 Billion dollars in 2011. (Remember this includes all revenues not just those billed through the operators/carriers, and thus obviously it has the gaming revenues now forming the majority of the smartphone apps ecosystem driven by Angry Birds. But as you can see, the biggest market in mobile gaming is the Advanced Asia-Pacific market led by obviously the gaming-mad nations of Japan and South Korea. China helps drive the Asia-Developing region to second place, with North America third, well ahead of the West Europeans in gaming revenues.

That is the kind of info the TomiAhonen Almanac 2012 has for several categories of its information. There are for example 9 seperate charts like the above, that split particular data across those 8 regions. Another vital point is the handset population. I have a full handset chapter covering smartphones and dumbphones. There I have 14 tables about the handset side of the industry including cameraphone resolutions and the input methods (touch screens and QWERTY keypads) etc. There also is a big table of handset installed base features, with information like this short excerpt:

INSTALLED BASE OF HANDSETS GLOBALLY 
SMS capable . . . . . . 100%
Color screen . . . . . . . . 95%
MMS capable . . . . . . . 85%
Memory card slot  . . . . 75%
Media player . . . . . . . . 73%
3G capable . . . . . . . . . 42%
Smartphone . . . . . . . .  19%

And so forth. There are 14 separate data items in that table alone (the above had 7). And the table has not only the data for the 14 items for the year 2011, but also the year before, 2010 and the growth rate for each item, so if you are making plans to launch your service and for example you might consider whether to do it on bluetooth or WiFi or 3G or via memory card, you can also see the growth rate and thus make your own projection of what the installed base might be at the end of this year.

But then for many service areas, that data is not the deciding factor, it is the particular needs of that business, and the installed base of handsets. So I have also where relevant, the chart describing the installed base of handsets globally, by the required needs of the type of business. Lets look at music for example:




(you can click on the chart to see larger version of it)

The needs of the handset installed base, for gaming, is quite diffrerent than that for music, or for television/video content etc. The above chart for example shows that if you want to sell ringing tones, today you can reach essentially all phones. But if you want to sell full-track MP3 music tracks, only about 3 out of every 4 phones has a media player, for which you can sell such music. And then that there is coming now the ever-more-common FM radio receiver, which may interfere with the music market. I have such 8 such charts in the Tomi Ahonen Almanac 2012 covering more than a dozen separate phone feature sets as relevant to that particular industry segment.

The Almanac has relevant distributions of information also by age, usage over time, market shares, etc. There are very valuable revenue data including for several categories, average revenue per subscriber (all connected including non-users) and average revenue per active user. There are of course pie graphs splitting particular areas into their sub-parts (like types of music, or types of advertising etc). But lets take one more chart to show the versatility of the TomiAhonen Almanac 2012. I am very proud of sharing information about the Digital Divide, to highlight the issues and also to celebrate that mobile is leading in helping bridge that divide. Here is the first chart of the chapter on the Digital Divide:




(you can click on the chart to see larger version of it)

The whole chapter examines the difference of the 'West' or the Industrialized World, and the Emerging World. The handsets, the subscribers, the revenues etc are all covered across this divide, information that is invaluable not only for 'Western' companies hoping to find markets (around mobile) in the Emerging World, but perhaps even more relevantly, for new companies growing rapidly in the Emerging World, who now are considering expaning abroad, and would like to see how different the rest of the world is (or is not).

The TomiAhonen Almanac 2012 includes several of my proprietary data that I am famous for, from the analysis of multiple subscribers separated from unique mobile phone owners, second handsets, shared phones, data cards, etc, to some big indexes I publish such as the index showing global leadership in mobile, and the big companies of the mobile industry etc. Then in the back of the Almanac are vital resources, including the very popular and widely referenced 'short history' chapter of major milestones. Did you know that mobile money was launched 14 years ago in Finland.. by Coca Cola (creating the world's first SMS-enabled Coke vending machines) or that 2002 was the year - yes 10 years ago - when the world's mobile phone accounts had passed the total fixed landline telephone connections in use.

And then there are the big tables at the back, 12 pages of more numbers and numbers and numbers. Of those perhaps the most useful is the chart of the 60 relevant countries (all countries where the population is more than 50 million, or where the mobile industry itself earns more than 1 Billion dollars, ie among the smaller European and Asian countries, any that have more than 4 million people typically). So Luxembourg and Monaco and Lichenstein are not 'cluttering' the data in this pocketable volume, but if you want Poland or Peru or the Philippines or Portugal, you will find the data here. And that chart has data you will be hard-pressed to find anywhere. In addition to the population size to put the country in context (not all are geography fanatics), there are data points for total mobile subscriptions and the national penetration rate fo course, but also the data for unique mobile users ! and info on whether the country has launched 3G, if the market offers MVNOs, and what standards of cellular technology are deployed (is there CDMA technology deployed in that country or only GSM). 

In addition to the 60 countries there are also tables for: 

30 leading countries by the Ahonen Index of Mobile Leadership
25 Countries with Most Mobile Subscribers
25 Countries by Highest Mobile Penetration Rate
25 Countries by Highest 3G Penetration Rate
20 Biggest Mobile Operator Groups

So that is the TomiAhonen Almanac 2012 edition. As Ricky Cadden 'The Symbian Guru' said of the Almanac, "Speaking of statistics, Tomi Ahonen has put together the Tomi Ahonen Almanac as an eBook for mobile nuts. In it, you can quickly find out the mobile penetration of say, Thailand, or that 51% of the Earth's population has at least one cellphone." Or how WAP Review wrote about the Almanac: "If you're interested in mobile statistics, you really need to pick up a copy of Tomi Ahonen's Almanac. The Almanac is full of hard to find information."

The whole package costs a mere 9.99 Euros and you can have it in your pocket today, loaded on your smartphone, and a copy on your iPad and another copy of the ebook on your laptop. I do literally use my own Almanac regularly in my work and obviously quote stats from it in my work regularly. If you would like to see more, please go to the Almanac info andordering page - which is the only place where you can buy or downlaod the Almanac (it is not sold on Amazon or Kindle or anywhere else except at this one page). See more at TomiAhonen Almanac 2012. 

All data in this blog posting may be freely quoted and used, including the images of the charts as on this blog as long as you do not alter the charts. If you do quote stats from this blog, please include a link to this page and please list your source as TomiAhonen Almanac 2012. 

Comments

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can i say the people that are the worst off are the telecoms? they really cannot monetize their pipe because it has become a commodity?

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