Latest Mobile Numbers for End of Year 2012 - This is getting humongous..

The nice thing with a strongly-growing giant industry is, that all the numbers keep growing, eh? The unfortunate side effect is, that almost any number you bother to memorize, becomes obsolete within months... But lets do this again. All major mobile numbers, now updates for End of Year 2012:

6.7 BILLION MOBILE SUBSCRIPTIONS IE 94% PENETRATION RATE FOR PLANET PER CAPITA

This is the big number. Update all your slides, we now are at 6.7 Billion active mobile phone 'subscriptions'. Obviously that is not in reality 94% of humans, as many of us have two phones or even three or more cellular connections (two smartphones and a tablet PC for example) and in many especially Emerging World markets, it is quite common to get prepaid SIM cards on every major network, and then do the 'SIM-card-switch' between the networks depending on who to call or send a message to.

But yes, the 'Mobile Moment' is nearly upon us, as I said, that will come in 2013, when there will be as many active mobile phone subscriptions as human beings alive (this of course includes contract based 'post-paid' accounts and 'pre-paid' SIM cards, and the uses of cellular subscriptions for other non-human uses like Machine-to-Machine and the 3G cellular connectivity of our data dongles and datacards and our tablets and netbooks, all added together).

The mobile industry added about 700 million new paying mobile subscriptions/accounts/SIM cards this year. The growth in mobile alone is about three times the installed base of all tablet PCs including iPads and all its rivals, combined. The growth alone, three times the installed base of tablets. Lets not pretend the tablets PC market is anything more than a niche, a nice healthy niche for PC makers, but tablets still don't even sell as many as laptops annually...  smartphones alone, ignoring all other mobile phones 'featurephones' that mostly also have full HTML web browsers, yes, just counting smartphoes alone, they outsell tablets this year by roughly speaking 10 to 1.

6.7 Billion mobile phone users (allowing for overlap). There has never ever EVER been any industry as widely spread as mobile is today - and it grew 11% this year by paying customers. This industry is viciously profitable - the most profitable company on the planet used to call itself a PC company, 'Apple Computer' but now just calls itself a 'mobile' company. The wealthiest man on the planet is no longer Bill Gates of the PC industry, it is Carlos Slim the boss of America Movil the massive mobile empire across Latin America and now expanding into Europe.

4.3B UNIQUES

So then lets dig into the numbers. 6.7 Billion is the aggregate number of mobile subscriptions, when we allow for multiple subscriptions. How many unique mobile phone users are there in the planet. The 'real' count of our market, when duplicates are removed? It is now up to 4.3 Billion unique humans. Yes, 61% of the planet's population, no mathematical cheating, six out of ten humans on the planet does have a mobile phone in their pocket, connected to a mobile network. So 2.4 Billion of all mobile phone subscriptions in use, are duplicates, second, third and even fourth or fifth accounts for those unique users. 36% of all active mobile acccounts now are redundant connections for us, above and beyond our primary mobile connection.

Or to put it in a more meaninful way, it means, mathematically that the average mobile phone user today globally, has 1.56 accounts or SIM cards. Yes, this was a mystery to our American cousins still very recently but the phenomenon that I first discovered out of Finland and has happened in every country that passes the 60% penetration level, we do see it in most countries now. More than 100 countries have passed 100% penetration level. The United States joined this club last year, Taiwan and Hong Kong passed the 100% penetration level eleven years ago, Finland, Singapore and Italy did it ten years ago. The UAE was the first country to report mobile subscriptions passing 200% and now several countries are joining that group such as Hong Kong, Panama and Macao, with Saudi Arabia just on the brink. 

5.3 BILLION MOBILE HANDSETS

And somewhere between the absolute ceiling of total active subscriptions, and above the floor of unique users, lies the number of total mobile phone handsets in use. My consultancy has also provided this number since it was first measured, and reports now that for 2012 the number is .. 5.3 Billion total handsets in use globally. So 4.3 Billion unique mobile users, walk around with 5.3 Billion phones. That means, the average mobile phone user has 1.23 handsets (think iPhone user who also has a Blackberry from work). And as each of the 5.3 Billion handsets does have a connection, the excess 'SIM card only' population of 'second and third accounts' is thus 1.4 Billion or 21% of all active mobile accounts are 'only SIM cards' without a regularly associated handset (used temporarily in a handset that is more used by another network). Yes, one in five mobile phone accounts are 'purely promiscuous' customers, you can understand the mobile operators/carriers are increasingly frustrated with their loyalty programs and attempting to identify who are the loyal customers and who are promiscuous...

1.3 BILLION SMARTPHONES

So then the hot story in mobile for the past few years, our smartphone addiction. You would be forgiven for thinking every phone by now is a smartphone, yet the numbers, while showing enormous growth, indicate that only 1.3 Billion smartphones are in use today. That is 25% of all handsets in use worldwide. Yes, you read that correctly. Globally speaking, three quarters of all people who use a mobile phone, does NOT have a smartphone, not an iPhone, not a Galaxy or Blackberry or Lumia. No, three out of four humans using a mobile phone, uses a 'dumbphone' - many of which have good cameras, large color touch-screens and full HTML internet browsers, and can download Java games including Angry Birds, but are not smartphones. The smartphone population grew enormously in the past year but is only at 1.3 Billion worldwide.

1.3 BILLION CONNECT VIA 3G VS 1.1B VIA WIFI

The connectivity of our handsets and data devices is still more driven by cellular than wireless. 3G and faster cellular networks account for 1.3 Billion total global mobile connections ie 19% of all subscriptions, and WiFi is used by 1.1 Billion or 16%. As a percentage of handsets in use, 25% of all handsets now connect to 3G or faster cellular networks (note, a far higher percentage of the phones are capable of 3G connectivity, but the network operators/carriers have not all yet deployed 3G to all regions and many consumers have not upgraded to the data plans that 3G network services often require). WiFi meanwhile is used by 21% of all handsets in use globally. I might add, that the 'traffic' measured via WiFi is vastly greater than that through 3G, as most 3G plans are metered or have usage limits, but WiFi tends to be 'all you can eat' so often the heaviest usage is done in free WiFi hotspots. Don't confuse usage measurements with user measurements.

5.6 BILLION USE SMS TEXTING

And for those who were spreading words of doom and the end of SMS, we have news. Predictable news. SMS text messaging total global user base grew again last year. Up now to 5.6 Billion total users, up 11% from last year. What's with Whatsapp and iMessage and Blackberry Messenger and Facebook and Skype messengers? They all have only a fraction of the smartphone and 3G/WiFi user number, all of those have well under 1 Billion mobile users today, and are not cross-service usable. You have to join a given messaging service, and get your friends to join the same one. But SMS works on all phones. That is why the very latest measured user data from smartphone users in the USA, UK etc, tell us that the vast overwhelming majority of smartphone users with one or more of those messaging platforms - still continues to use SMS text messaging.

Make no mistake, the heaviest users of SMS have shifted most of their heavy messaging traffic away from SMS to the more efficient msssaging platforms. Several countries report a decline in total SMS traffic this year for the first time. But globally, the number of SMS users, the total number of messages sent, and the revenues earned by SMS still all grew in 2012. Yes, SMS total user base grew by 11% this year. In almost any other industry, if you grew 11% in one year you'd have a highlight year of huge bonuses. Imagine airlines or hotels or the cola drinks or shampoo or ice cream industry, they don't grow 11% per year in new users. SMS text messaging did, in 2012. Yet there are 'pundits' and 'experts' who write about the death to SMS. Haha. That may be coming. But its not here yet. Not this year and not in 2013 either...

VOICE CALLS ON MOBILE 5.4 BILLION USERS

Globally, as a percentage of all subscriptions, SMS is the most used mobile service (yes, used more than voice calls) and used by 83% of the mobile phone subscribers. Voice calls come in second, at 5.4 Billion users and 81% of all mobile users. So don't make the mistake of calling it anymore a 'mobile phone' or 'cellphone' - it is no longer primarily a 'portable telephone' - our mobile today, globally, is first and foremost a messaging device, with voice calls a highly used optional extra.. Call it a 'mobile' but not a 'mobile phone'. And yes, you read that correctly. Out of all mobile subscriptions active on the planet, for 19% there is no use for voice calls at all. Some of these are data connections to our laptops, some are 'M2M' Machine-to-Machine connections like our smart electric meters or the irrigation systems operated by SMS like used in India etc. And many more, are mobile handset users, who don't need voice, at least, not traditional cellular voice (they may well use Skype occasionally, but not traditional mobile/cellular voice). But they do use SMS text messaging and other features on the phone..

CAMERA USED BY 72%

The camera on a mobile phone is now used by 4.8 Billion people worldwide. Understand this for context - out of all people who have ever used any kind of camera in their lifetimes, for 12 out of 13 persons who ever used a camera, the only type of camera they ever used, was that on a cameraphone. Not the traditional stand-alone Canons, Nikons, Olympuses etc. Yes, for 12 out of 13 persons on the planet who ever took even one picture, the only camera they every used, was some kind of cameraphone camera. Don't tell me the cameraphone is a toy. Only one person in 13 who has taken pictures, has ever used a 'stand alone' camera either digital or film-based, and most of those will also take at least some pictures on their smartphones too... Oh, and lets look at per capita globally? Two thirds of the planet now have a cameraphone in their pockets, yes 68% penetration rate of cameraphones per capita, across the planet.

The planet has 1.6 Billion personal computers (this includes tablet PCs) - each with a screen. The world has 2 Billion television sets, each with a screen. Toss in 250 million portable gaming devices with a screen. And call it 300 million digital cameras with a screen. Thats under 4.2 Billion electronic devices that have a screen, in most cases, a color screen. And in our pockets, we have 4.8 Billion cameraphones, each with a color screen. Wow. For the planet, the mobile is 'the first screen' so to speak...

4 BILLION RECEIVED ADS IN THEIR POCKET THIS YEAR

And the world's largest advertsing platform and media is... no longer radio. It is now mobile! Yes, in 2012, 4.0 Billion people - a whole 60% of all mobile subscribers - and 56% of human beings alive - have received advertsing on their phones. How can that be if smartphones are only used 1.3 Billion and even web-browsers are used by 2.1 Billion (which has mostly overlap with those smartphones)? Its because the world's most widely used advertising format is.. SMS text messaging, of course. And number 2? Is not web banner ads, is MMS picture messaging (or more correctly, as MMS can do videos, sounds, long texts, web links and pictures, it is as the name is called, Multimedia Messaging Service). Even ringback tones have hundreds of millions of advertising audiences. So don't think that mobile ads are only with your gaming apps and banner ads and pre-roll video interruptions. Most humans who received ads on their phones this year, did so via SMS and MMS, not apps or the web banners...

MMS HAS 2.9 BILLION ACTIVE USERS

And then lets go to MMS. If you liked SMS and are a media brand or advertiser or consumer oriented company, you will love MMS. MMS can be used, yes to send pictures from one phone to another - but is a clumsy and costly and unreliable way to do that. Better ways exist especially for all who have data plans and smartphones and good mobile web services or social networking and picture sharing services. Not all mobile phone users have that, some use MMS yes, just to send a few pictures to their family and friends. Grandparents for example sending pictures of the cool Aston Martin they saw parked on the street that they know the 9 year old grandson would love to see. That is not the main market for MMS and where its growth and market is.

MMS is a multimedia platform. It is perfectly suited for news, entertainment, video, audio, pictures, long text messages, weblinks, QR codes, and yes, advertising. For delivering amazing, highly beloved, widely distributed, highly personal, relevant and timely advertising. Where good ad campaigns get routinely above 25% response rates !!! Routinely !!! Not the pathetic and hated banner ads that on mobile might yield you 4% click-through rates (and mind you, even the hated banner ads on mobile - do 10x better than their online cousins the banner ads do on the web).

MMS is the ultimate 'Engagement Marketing' platform and countless mobile ad players from Blyk to OutThereMedia to Optism to Qustodian know this and use MMS to its fullest power. If you are in media or any consumer-oriented business and are ignoring the digital interactive platform that has more active users than the global internet.. 50% more users than the total number of television sets on the planet - you do so at your own peril. Don't expect to remain employed till the end of this decade, however. 43% of all mobile phone subscribers are using MMS, globally. The 2.9 Billion total MMS user base is more astonishingly 41% of all human beings alive! MMS is the most wide-reaching multimedia platform on the planet.

2.3 BILLION CONSUME NEWS ON MOBILE

Why was it that the Associated Press Managing Editors' Conference concluded about a year ago, that the future of news is not the internet, it is mobile? And why they say that while newspapers were unable to monetize the internet, they are able to do so on mobile? Because of the numbers. The total number of mobile phone subscribers who consume news on their phones is now 34%. Or yes, 2.3 Billion people almost one in three humans alive (remember, this is all humans, counting from babies to great-grandparents) yes, 32% of all humans alive now consume news on their mobiles. Newspapers now send tomorrow's headlines today via MMS and SMS as premium services to their readers. You don't have even to be literate to get news on mobile, voice based news services are very popular in many countries, serving multiple language groups, on premium voice channels as subscription services. And yes, to put it in context these are PAID news users, 2.3 Billion on mobile. Compare to total paid subscription TV services (all formats, entertainment, movies, music, news, etc) of about 1 Billion or total newspaper circulations worlwide of only 430 million. But 2.3 Billion pay to get news on their mobiles. No wonder the Associated Press says the future of news is mobile.

2.1 BILLION USE ANY KIND OF MOBILE BROWSER INCL WAP, 1.5 BILLION USE 'REAL' INTERNET

So then the big internet number? The world has 2.5 Billion internet users now at the end of 2012. And look at that number - 2.1 Billion access browser-based internet content on a mobile handset! Yes, that includes the crude basic WAP browsers, that still populate very low-cost and old hand-me-down second hand phones many use in Africa and India etc. But yes, out of all internet users today, 84% access internet content at least part of the time using a mobile phone (including WAP). And 2.1 Billion mobile internet users (when WAP is included) means 31% of all mobile subscribers.

And then lets address the purists, who think we should only consider HTML 'real internet' even as most familiar browser-based internet services like Google Search, Facebook etc are available also via WAP - but yes, lets do 'real internet' on mobile. How many? 1.5 Billion ie 60% of all internet users, and 22% of all mobile subscribers. Note that this is still well above the total count of smartphones and 3G and WiFi users, because many featurephones have full HTML browsers, and especially in many Emerging World countries, even where 3G is not available, a 2.5G based cellular internet connection, at considerable cost, is far cheaper than attempting an unreliable landline based 'fixed' internet connection, at huge costs and often severe service disruptions.

To put this in another way. We know 400 million internet users do not use a mobile phone, they are 'pure' legacy PC based internet users, or down to only 16% of all internet users (remember, this was 100% of internet users only 13 years ago). There are 1.6 Billion PCs of any kind (desktops, laptops, tablets) and by today, almost all of those are connected to the web (not quite, but we can round it off now to 100%). And about 200 million more who share their access on the PC ie using an internet cafe etc. So 1.8 Billion who use the PC at least some of the time or 72%. Thus 28% of worldwide internet users ie 700 million people never use a PC at all and only use a mobile to access the internet, and a massive 84% of all internet users use a mobile at least part of the time. That tells us that 1.4 Billion people - and 56% of internet users actively use both a mobile phone (includes smartphones and basic phones including WAP) and a PC (including tablet PCs like iPad in PC definition). Yes, more than half of us internet users today use both a PC and a mobile phone to access the web. And by nearly 2 to 1 margin, the exclusive users now favor mobile-only over PC-only users.

There is a good reason so many now talk of a post-PC era and the legacy internet and the end of the mass market internet etc. The balance of users has already shifted to mobile and the game is tilting ever more in that direction.

PREMIUM SMS HAS 1.9 BILLION USERS

Do you vote for TV shows like American Idol or Eurovision Song Contest? Well, we measure that too. The various forms of premium SMS services from paying for your Coca Cola to checking into your airline with your boarding pass to paying for public transport and parking, to yes, voting on TV shows, the premium SMS market has reached 1.9 Billion paying customers. Huge. This is yes, almost twice the number of paid television subscription services, satellite, cable and digital TV systems, combined. Its 28% of all mobile subscribers and by far the most popular service type among Premium SMS is voting for TV shows. Roughly one in every 12 dollars earned by the global television industry comes from TV votes; Finland became the first country where Premium SMS revenues earned by TV outpaced advertising revenues AND subscription TV revenues. Some television franchises like Pop Idol earn in excess of half a Billion dollars in annual revenues, bonus above their usual TV advertising income, just out of premium SMS televotes. This is why I call Mobile the Magical Money-Making Machine in my books.

SEVERAL IN THE 1.2 BILLION OR SO RANGE

Then we have several more categories that are in the above 1 Billion user level. Apps are downloaded now by 1.2 Billion people (this includes Java based apps on featurephones as well as more advanced apps on smartphones). Gamers playing downloaded or networked games (ignoring pre-installed games that came with the handset) now number 1.2 Billion globally. Yes, 2.4 times more people play games on their mobile handsets than the total installed base of all stand-alone gaming consoles, tabletop and pocketable, combined.

1.3 Billion of us use search already on our mobile phones. Thats 19% of all mobile subscribers for those who are counting. Social networking like Facebook, Twitter, Linked In etc are used by 1.1 Billion people on mobile phones, both Facebook and Twitter announced this year 2012, that their half-point has been passed where now the majoirty of their users come from mobile phones, not PCs. And last but not least, ringback tones! RBTs have now 1.0 Billion global users, led by China and India obviously but highly popular in Russia, Indonesia, Turkey etc and increasingly also in more advanced Industrialized Countries of Europe and North America. In Asia-Pacific they have been the rage for some time already. How big is that? 15% of all mobile subscribers are now paying a monthly fee to have custom ringback tones via their networks and the music industry loves this subscription service as it cannot be pirated...

THATS IT. THE BIG NUMBERS ONCE AGAIN

So thats the big picture. Here to summarize the main numbers as the end of 2012 globally:

GLOBAL MOBILE NUMBERS 
Human population . . . . . . . . . 7.1 Billion
Mobile subscriptions . . . . . . . 6.7 Billion is 94% per capita
Unique Mobile Users . . . . . . . 4.3 Billion is 61% per capita
Handsets in use . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Billion
Smartphones . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Billion is 25% of all handsets
3G Connections . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Billion is 19% of subscriptions and 25% of handsets
WiFi users on mobile  . . . . . . 1.1 Billion is 16% of subscriptions and 21% of handsets
SMS active users . . . . . . . . . 5.6 Billion is 83% of subscriptions
Voice call users . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Billion is 81% of subscriptions
Camera users  . . . . . . . . . . . 4.8 Billion is 72% of subscriptions
Mobile Ad audience . . . . . . . . 4.0 Billion is 60% of subscriptions, is 56% of planet
MMS active users . . . . . . . . . 2.9 Billion is 43% of subscriptions and 60% of cameraphone users
News active users . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Billion is 34% of subscriptions
Browser (including WAP) . . . . 2.1 Billion is 31% of subscriptions and 84% of all internet users
Premium SMS . . . . . . . . . . . 1.9 Billion is 28% of subscriptions and 34% of all SMS users
HTML browser 'real internet' . . 1.5 Billion is 22% of subscriptions and 60% of all internet users
Search on mobile . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Billion is 19% of subscriptions and 62% of mobile browser users
Gamers (download/browse) . . 1.2 Billion is 18% of subscribers and 57% of mobile browser users
Apps downloaders . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Billion is 18% of subscribers
Social Networking . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Billion is 16% of subscribers and 53% of mobile browser users
Ringback tone subscribers . . . 1.0 Billion is 15% of subscribers
Source for all the above: TomiAhonen Almanac 2013
This data may be freely shared and quoted

Yes, the above is all excerpted from the upcoming 2013 edition of the statistical yearbook TomiAhonen Almanac 2013. You may freely quote this blog and use any data in it and re-write any parts of this blog to better suit your readers. Just use the source as TomiAhonen Almanac 2013 and please also link to this blog, ok?

And if you don't happen to have the Almanac yet, I have a year-end special for you. Anyone who buys the 2012 edition now, gets both the 2012 edition now, and the new 2013 edition for no extra charge when that is finished in late January/early February of 2013. There is no reason to wait for the new edition. Get both for the price of one and get all of the current edition data now. The TomiAhonen Almanac 2012 is a massive 190 page volume as ebook/mbook in unrestricted pdf file, formated for your small screens of your iPhones, Galaxies and Blackberries, to have all the mobile data at your fingerprints.  See more here TomiAhonen Almanac 2012.

Comments

[v-pills]

Very good article. Regards from Turkiye!

[Jon Arne Sæterås]

This is what we have been waiting for since January this year! :D Thank you, Tomi!

[Matt]

Can you clarify what is meant by "SMS active users" and "Voice call users". These cannot be actual users but mobile subscriptions which partake in these services?

I am more interested to know the number of unique human users who use SMS vs. voice calls than the number of subscriptions which use these.

[Alex Kerr]

Thank you for this Tomi, great data.

I did find it raised several questions for me though, it would be great to have some clarification if you have a moment!

1.) You write "3 out of 4 humans ... uses a 'dumbphone' - many of which have good cameras, large color touch-screens and full HTML internet browsers, and can download Java games including Angry Birds, but are not smartphones."
I understand it is industry convention to not call devices of that specification, smartphones (and hence why you are making the distinction!). But I would respectfully suggest that the industry is wholly wrong. A device with that spec is a smartphone, full blown and fully fledged. It can do everything fuller smartphones can do, but to a lesser spec, but it is still on the same scale, not a different class of device. Java Mobile (J2ME) has VERY fully featured APIs these days, excellent developer tools, and is mature and stable. That native apps on feature/dumbphones are not written in J2ME is an implementation detail, not a differentiator indicating a different class of device. And of course we know Android runs as a sandboxed virtual machine, too.

2.) Just to clarify - where you refer to 'WAP' do you literally mean technically WAP, i.e. WML pages, in all cases? (e.g. Nokia 3410 with WAP/WML over a CSD data bearer http://bit.ly/V6Kbpo ) Because I have heard it used elsewhere to mean 'not full HTML browsing like a PC desktop', thus lumping valid XHTML over a GPRS TCP/IP data bearer in with an older class of non-(X)HTML device (a different beast to my mind, e.g. Nokia 6230 http://bit.ly/QapjfX ). It should be noted for the purists that WAP 2.0 is (X)HTML using standard internet protocols, and therefore fully valid. Nokia seemed to replace WAP/WML with XHTML around the 2003/4 mark - are devices older than this still being used (with a data connection)!? I thought WAP gateways were no longer in use for starters...I'd be very interested if they still are.

3.) As I understand it, MMS requires a working mobile internet connection on the phone to send the data, so am I right in thinking the discrepancy between this and the number of people using internet on their mobile (2.1 billion), i.e. 800 million people is due to them simply not using the valid working data connection they have to browse the internet with, for some reason ?

4.) You write "Apps are downloaded now by 1.2 Billion people (this includes Java based apps on featurephones as well as more advanced apps on smartphones)". This puzzles me because the numbers of smartphone users are 1.3 billion, and vast numbers of people use apps on featurephones (for example, Nokia alone sees downloads in the low-hundred-millions per month on S40). There are somewhere between 3 - 4 billion featurephones capable of running Java apps. Only a subset of that will have internet (tho noting apps can be sideloaded onto featurephones via bluetooth or cable), and then only a subset of those will actually install apps, but still, to me the numbers don't add up, especially when you factor in GetJar, any other independent J2ME-carrying app stores, and loads of carrier-specific appstores. The total of 1.2 billion might work if we said most smartphone owners don't download apps, but of course that makes no sense. I would expect a figure at the very least of 2 billion+ (smart and featurephones) downloading apps, no?

Thank you again for all the data.

Alex

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi V-Pills, Jon, Matt and Alex

V-Pills - thanks, you're welcome

Jon - thanks, you too, you're welcome (and I trust you didnt' really wait 11 months for all this data, some of the data points have been released during the year on this blog haha)

Matt - good questions, but a near hopeless task and wish. Its like Radicati measuring 3.1 Billion email boxes but unable to tell us exactly how many unique users ie how many of those are the same user at work and at home, how many more are deliberate duplicates allowing us to use fake emails to avoid spam when registering to miscellaneous sites, plus old and unused mail boxes etc. We do know there are duplicates, but only very deep global uniform-methodology end-user surveys can give guidance on the multiple usage.

Same goes for voice calls and SMS users. What we DO know, is that this percentage and absolute numbers are based on total subscriptions. And while you may think you want the unique user count - actually the subscriber count is perhaps also useful - very often we have clear and distinct behavior and traffic we put on say our 'company phone' compared to our 'personal phone'. So when 83% of all global mobile subscriptions are used for SMS text messaging, and as I have two mobile accounts currently, I do use both for SMS (on two separate networks, from two countries). I am sorry if this is not good enough for you, I can tell you, nobody has the data you are wishing for, and this blog is by far the deepest data you'll find for free anywhere. I hope it helps...

Alex, Alex, Alex, what will I do with you haha.. Always the deeper and technical questions, eh? Ok, lets try.

Dumbphones? Seriously? You of all people. You KNOW the point is what can be measured, and its utterly pointless to bicker about where is the line between an advanced featurephone and a dumb smartphone - for years we've had far more advanced 'dumbphones' in Japan than for example most top smartphones in the USA.. Its what can be measured, and soon the distinction becomes academic, as before this decade is done, the dumbphone will be dead and all mobiles will be smartphones.

On WAP - its still very big in Africa, India, Indonesia etc.. I think you're thinking too much with an European focus on this haha

On MMS - this is active users as is browsing, not whether the handset and network offer that ability. There are more than 4 Billion phones that are connected to, and technically 'configured' to be able to access browser-based content but the users don't use 'the mobile internet' for whatever reason. Many of those are, however, using MMS. So this is not a measurement of which devices are connected and configured, it is actual active users of the service (MMS or browsing)

Apps downloaded - actually no, Alex, not nearly all smartphone users globally download apps. Remember still nearly one in ten smartphones in the West are employee phones, most which are limited or prohibited from downloading apps. And while you and I are geeks who download everything, not everybody is.. All recent smartphone user surveys have far less than total app usage. The number I have here includes Java/Brew users on lesser phones than smartphones ie featurephones. As always, I optimize my numbers based on all data points I find for a 'best fit' so its a near forecast of the conglomeration of all recent survey and measured usage data I've found. And it includes both smartphones and featurephones.

I hope that helped..

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Wayne Borean]

I agree with Alex. If a phone is 'programmable', which any phone you can install a Java or Brew application on is, it is a SmartPhone.

Which includes phones like my old Motorola Razr flip phone, a great little device. Just what exactly is being used as the definition of SmartPhone?

Wayne

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Wayne

I am using the industry standard definition and yes, there is plenty of gray area between low end smartphones and high end featurephones, for us to argue 'how' they should be classified is pointless - because they cannot be measured that way. The industry measures only two types of phones, smartphones and dumbphones. I use the standard definition as used by Gartner, IDC, Strategy Analytics and Canalys, the four big analyst houses who report on quarterly smartphone and dumbphone sales. I hear you, you make a good point, but if its not accurately measured by the industry, for us to cry on this blog that this is not perfect information, is utterly pointless. I report here what is measured, be happy we have at least that level of detail

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Alex Kerr]

Hi Tomi,

Thank you :) Yep, I ask the detailed technical questions to make sure we're all reading from the same page - too much misunderstanding and hype floating around out there in the world (not on here of course ;-)

1.) OK, I see exactly what you're saying (I think!) and good point, for stats purposes it only matters what can be measured. I was really lamenting that those measurements are wrongly classified (and I note that you are not disagreeing with my points but saying something different). I won't make it here, but I can and have written the arguments that all featurephones for the last decade that have internet and app install capability are fully fledged smartphones, albeit low end ones. I agree that all phones will be smartphones within a few years, but it's provable (well, based on multiple good sources) that they will either be still labelled as featurephones and/or (more likely) not just running the current set of smartphone OSes (e.g. Android etc.). Multiple sources point to about another 4 billion featurephones being sold by around 2016, and there are currently over 4 billion in use. Massive smartphone (Android) growth does not negate several billion of these current and future featurephones still being in use for many years yet, especially as they will filter down in used form to the poorest (a few billion of whom still do not have phones). I would say however that we can blanket pretty much all these devices with a 'smartphone' label, and thus concur with you :)

2.) WAP - Hmm, wish I knew how much was WAP 1 (WML) and how much WAP 2 (XHTML) or HTML.

3.) Yep, I see what you're saying. I'm just wondering if those 800 million users that have MMS but are not browsing, are aware that they have a working data connection on the phone. However, I will somewhat challenge myself on that because I forgot the network will classify it as a different service anyway from an administrative point of view, so although the data connection is established, you (probably?) can't use the MMS data allowance (noting it's sold as numbers of MMS, rather than an actual data allowance) for web browsing etc.

4.) OK, I stand corrected, that is definitely good to know and an interesting data point. General *hype* suggests that smartphone users download apps and featurephone users don't, but on both counts that's clearly far from true!

Cheers
Alex

[Antoine RJ Wright]

Very impressive set of stats as usual Tomi; I've got this ready to go up towards my audience, but I remain with some questions that probably won't be answered until I get into the '13 Almanac:

- You mention here that there are about 700M new subs globally; about how many dead/non-active ones? I'm guessing that of the 700M that many of these were new to mobile, but some percentage could have been folks getting a second account or even re-initializing an account?

- Sort of the same question when it comes to devices. There was the increase in sales (11% I believe, am being lazy in not scrolling up); but how many new versus resales. I think I mentioned to you about this time last year that I felt that many markets are hitting a plateau in terms of new sales, with many sales being to folks who already own devices. I wonder how that aspect of things is being recorded (if it is) and how that effects the overall usage-environment of mobile going forward (maturity in services, developers declining in importance to strategy/management/alt fields, etc.).

- You stayed away from mentioning LBS/GPS services or devices in this round. I hope you touch on that and more (P2P usage, NFC beyond the mobile payments hype, VoIP, etc.). I know that you track and stay attached more or less to those things that are actually making money, yet a lot of the tech/usage that we've been hearing in 2012 isn't generating much of anything (pennies vs the dollars of other industries when they started on the maturity curve). Do you see mobile, or at least those not prepared to see mobile beyond communications, able to get out of that kind of rut going forward? Or, will it take that 8th mass media, and a few other hardware/services/legislation steps, to see beyond "its a smaller radio/TV/computer/phone" that many around mobile's black slabs seem to stay entrenched in?

Again, am reposting this on my site; but in a cleaner table. I can never seem to just grab the necessary snippets of your pieces like this without doing some mild reformatting.

Always a pleasure to read Tomi; blessings.

[Winter]

@Baron95
Did you just explain to Tomi that people in the developing world are more likely to use pre-paid SIM cards than people in the USA?

Was this a revelation to you?

[baron007]

@winter

Baron95 were sad
Android is too powerfull
china & korea phone will kill microsoft & apple
Please be gentle to him

[baron007]

@baron95

relax bro
Android winning is not the end of the world.
Apple and microsoft not gonna bankrupt in 3-5 year.
Thats enough time for you
Your doctor said you still have 1 year

[Winter]

Some Android numbers from China:

China absolutely loves Android
http://www.androidcentral.com/china-absolutely-loves-android

"So if 295,000 of the 1.5 million [Android] phones activated daily [with Google] (rounded up for easy math) are sold in China, that means that 20-percent (19.666-percent) of all the numbers you see getting thrown around come from one country [China]. And that is a whole lot of smartphones.

Interesting aside -- it also means that a full 13-percent of all "android devices" sold in China aren't even counted as Android activations by Google."

At the end of the piece there is a bold prediction:
"Looking forward, Android is expected to continue gaining market share globally and, by 2015, one in every two handsets[id] sold worldwide will be powered by it."

Sounds less great if you read on:
"... the market share of this platform could potentially peak – or even decline – after 2016 owing to a more aggressive penetration of the alternative OSs, most notably Windows Phone"

If the second part of the prediction is this bad, the first will be implausible too.

[C. Enrique Ortiz]

Hi Tomi, thanks for always great article/numbers/stats.

As a related note, see "Feature vs. Smartphone" -- a definition from 2009! (and still valid): http://weblog.cenriqueortiz.com/handsets/2009/06/28/feature-vs-smart-phone/

ceo

[chithanh]

@Winter
There can never be a $50 Windows phone because Microsoft already charges $30 or so for the WP license. And to make a dent in Android sales, the competitors need to be present in the sub-$100 market, because that is where the rapid growth happens in developing countries.

Tizen and Mozilla have already recognized this. Microsoft hasn't, the cheapest WP8 phone is still around $250. And Apple chose not to compete at the low end, which we increasingly see come back to bite them.

[baron007]

@baron95

good job bro.
You really trash tomi
No wonder balmer told me to go to this website and learn from you.

I hope tomi follower will learn fast from you that wp8 is the future, android sucks. It would be a shame to use a cheap phone. It only show poor, not prestige.

[Winter]

@Baron95
"Oh, yes, their entire business plan was to make cheap electronics for Nokia et al cheap jungle smartphones."

First, you explain to Tomi that poor people tend to use pre-paid SIMs. Now you are explaining to us that Nokia supplier ST-Ericsson is going down because they do not make cheap Android phones.

I think you need some vacation. Go get some rest over the holidays.

[RyanZA]

You guys don't understand where Baron95 is coming from - in his world, the only use for poor people is to be put in labor camps making his iPhones, and then quickly shot if they fail to meet targets. I'm sure he could provide even more shareholder value by feeding the corpses of the unproductive labor to the productive labor to save on food costs.

Obviously also, anybody who doesn't choose to buy an iPhone must be unable to afford one, and should be quickly shipped off to one of these labor camps (or just immediately shot and turned into food for productive labor if they don't look strong enough). If you don't upgrade your iPhone immediately on the launch of a new iPhone, you also obviously can't afford to upgrade and should be quickly deported.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Baron95, where only rich iPhone owners are real humans and the only people anybody should market to!

[cycnus]

@RyanZA

Soylent green is people.

My dad (almost 70) lost his phone 3 times in the past 10 year.

The second time is while he went on to other city.
He call me because he was on a tight schedule and don't want to sit in the carrier office waiting to be served. I went to the carrier office, ask them to temporary disconnect the service until my dad come to their office to replace the card. It wasn't a pleasant experience because there were lots of documents I need to sign.

The third time is while he went to other country.
Luckily, the person who took the phone do not use to call.

After that, my dad only use pre-paid.
and he was downgraded by baron95 from VIP into junk.
lol

[Tester]

Hopeless...

Baron95 is praying to the iGod again... :D