First Time Ever Anywhere: International Data on Smartphone Unique Owner Installed Base - Including regional smartphone ownership analysis

I love statistics! Numbers are my buddies. And today TNS is one of my best buddies evah, as they have released their survey data on 54 countries and ownership of smartphones (and of tablets, and of PCs). Plus tons of other awesome data you just HAVE to see.. Its an interactive website and you can do X/Y positioning etc... Really really great stuff, thank you TNS !!! (And thank you Google for providing this data)

The data is what TNS has been collecting over time so you see time-series per country as well. And as they have been adding countries to their survey data, you also notice the number of countries growing in their sample. They have not measured how many smartphones are sold, or how many smartphones are in use. These numbers will invariably include multiple ownership (one person having two smartphones). What TNS has done, is surveyed individual ownership status. Who owns at least one smartphone. So they are actually measuring for us 'unique users' and that is awesome and valuable data for almost anyone in the mobile industry. And their data right off the website is extremely useful right off the bat (especially as it also includes tablet ownership separately, so you can get that split where some reports will lump tablets 'as mobile' devices haha where we know moblie phones are distinct devices from tablets. Tablets are not 'mobile' they are only ultraportable PCs. And increasingly that thought, what I've been talking about for years, is starting to be the accepted position also among the PC and tablet makers...

But back to what we have. Now, when you look at some market data, the reported TNS data is very similar to what we have recently seen in other sources. That makes it very credible. Now, next, we want to know what is the exact definition of what they surveyed. It is not ownership of smartphones 'per capita' ie across the total population. It is of 'adult' population ownership only. They define adult as anyone age 16 or above. That used to be a good metric for smartphones but is no longer really a good cut-off age limit, as especially in the Industrialized World, many teens well below that age have smartphones. But its good for us to know, because now the data is more meaningful. And the above 16 year issue may not seem obvious to consider, but in Japan 85% of the total population is over age 16 but in Nigeria only 52% of the population is older than 16 years of age. Aha, so we need to adjust the numbers for the total population, not just 'adult' population. The 'per capita' measure - across all ages including babies, is the best measure in mobile and it is the one we use for all mobile stats nowadays. So I have done that math for you.

And now the very good news. Across almost all major Industrialized World countries, UK, Germany, USA, Australia, Singapore, etc the data is VERY well consistent with other reported data such as ComScore and Nielsen and various national regulators etc. This gives us very good confidence that their data is solid.

But then when we look at what it reports for India, for China, for Indonesia.. in fact essentially all Emerging World countries, unfortunately the TNS data is skewing far FAR too high. That means (very likely, I do not know for sure) that TNS has probably only surveyed 'Metropolitan' users ie city dwellers, not the total population. This is quite common for example for many China and India stats by several of the major analysts. So what I did, was adjust all Emerging World market countries (aka 'Developing World') downards, to the nearest known number. 

Then we have one more issue. Youth ownership of smartphones. It may surprise some of the readers visiting this blog rarely, but will not be a surprise to regular readers or my Twitter feed at @tomiahonen that youth own very highly smartphones in the Industrialized World, especially Europe and the Advanced countries of Asia-Pacific like Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and Australia..So I just assigned an arbitrary number, that half of the age group from 12 years to 15 years have smartphones at the same rate as adults (and the other half don't own smartphones but typically will all have dumbphones/featurephones if not smartphones). For North America ie USA and Canada I assigned only 25% as the value rather than half, as their mobile stats consistently lag all Western European and Advanced Asia-Pacific stats including obviously smartphone stats.

Now, with the TNS survey data as the base data input, but with many TomiAhonen Consulting adjustments to the data, we have the world's first public source published data on unique smartphone ownership numbers globally. I have data on 50 major mobile countries on all 6 inhabited continents and also the 8 regions that I also use in the TomiAhonen Almanac and the TomiAhonen Phone Book statistical volumes. Separately, I have then used my company stats to assign the second smartphone ownership to the regions, so we have that data too, on a regional basis.

Let me reiterate. This is actual, unique smartphone owners in absolute numbers (millions of humans) across all ages, not just adults. Some data has been made public of that by some organizations like ComScore and Nielsen etc, but only of a few countries. Never for 50 countries and now we also have May 2014 dated regional ownership data on smartphones. This data will be included in the brand new 2014 edition of the TomiAhonen Phone Book.

UNIQUE SMARTPHONE OWNERSHIP STATISTICS BY COUNTRY AND AS PERCENT OF POPULATION

Country . . . . . . . Unique Smartphone Owners . . . . As Pct of Total Population all ages
Argentina . . . . . . 9.5 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  23%
Australia . . . . . . 12.1 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56%
Austria . . . . . . . . 4.0 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48%
Belgium . . . . . . . . 3.7 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35%
Brazil . . . . . . . . . 41.5 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21%
Bulgaria . . . . . . . . 1.9 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26%
Canada . . .  . . . . 16.2 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47%
China . . . . . . . . 450.4 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33%
Colombia . . . . . . 14.8 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31%
Czech Republic . . 3.8 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37%
Denmark . . . . . . . 3.3 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60%
Egypt . . . . . . . . .11.0 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13%
Finland . . . . . . . . 2.7 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50%
France . . . . . . . .26.6 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42%
Germany . . . . . .35.3 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43%
Greece . . . . . . . .4.1 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37%
Hong Kong . . . . . 5.0 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63%
Hungary . . . . . . . 3.2 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32%
India . . . . . . . . . 85.9 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7%
Indonesia . . . . . .38.5 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17%
Ireland . . . . . . . . . 2.6 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56%
Israel . . . . . . . . . . 3.7 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53%
Italy . . . . . . . . . . 27.4 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46%
Japan . . . . . . . . .52.9 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42%
Malaysia . . . . . . 10.0 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36%
Mexico . . . . . . . 30.7 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28%
New Zealand . . . . 2.2 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51%
Netherlands . . . . . 9.2 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55%
Nigeria . . . . . . . .31.1 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18%
Norway . . . . . . . . 2.9 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59%
Philippines . . . . 16.4 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16%
Poland . . . . . . . 13.6 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36%
Portugal . . . . . . . 3.2 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30%
Romania . . . . . . . 5.8 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28%
Russia . . . . . . . . 50.4 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36%
Saudi Arabia . . . . 15.8 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53%
Singapore . . . . . . . 3.5 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71%
Slovakia . . . . . . . . 2.3 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42%
South Africa . . . . 15.5 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31%
South Korea . . . . 32.4 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67%
Spain . . . . . . . . . 27.4 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60%
Sweden . . . . . . . . 6.0 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65%
Switzerland . . . . . 4.0 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52%
Taiwan . . . . . . . . 13.1 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57%
Thailand . . . . . . . 19.1 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28%
Turkey . . . . . . . . 20.2 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27%
UK . . . . . . . . . . 35.8 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58%
Ukraine . . . . . . . . 8.7 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19%
USA . . . . . . . . 148.5 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47%
Vietnam . . . . . . 14.9 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16%

Rest of World . .188.7 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10%

WORLD TOTAL 1,591 Million (1.6 Billion) . . . . . . . . 22%

NOTE: Above is 'unique' smartphone users, many who may own 2 smartphones or have multiple SIM cards or a second dumbphone. Total global smartphone installed base is 1.83 Billion when multiple smartphone ownership is included.

Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 21 August 2014, based significantly on TNS survey data as of May 2014
This table may be freely shared


Isn't that cool? First time ever we have unique smartphone owners on this many countries. Noiw remember, we cannot do a 'migration rate' count by mutiplying those unique owner smartphone numbers against subscriber counts, as subscriber numbers now exceed 100% per capita (in leading countries over 200% per capita) ie many of us have two or three or more active SIM cards/subscriptions. If you wanted to do migration-rate calculation you would need total unique mobile phone owners per country (for some countries we do have that data in the public domain, but only a few).

So if you wanted to consider where to launch your apps or what is the market size for your service or release a new type of phone or some accessories etc, that table is the best data we've ever seen of how many people actually own a premium phone/smartphone in those countries. Globally the unique smartphone owner number is 1.6 Billion or 22% of the planet's population.

TOP 12 COUNTRIES BY HIGHEST PENETRATION PER CAPITA

Singapore . . . . 71%
South Korea . . 67%
Sweden . . . . .  65%
Hong Kong . . . 63%
Spain . . . . . . .  60%
Denmark . . . . . 60%
Norway . . . . . . 59%
UK . . . . . . . . . 58%
Taiwan . . . . . . 57%
Australia . . . . .56%
Ireland . . . . . . 56%
Netherlands . . 55%

Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 21 August 2014, based significantly on TNS survey data as of May 2014
This table may be freely shared

So some comments. Very small countries are not included, so UAE and Macau and Monaco and Luxembourg would all feature very near the top, UAE likely tops.

Many ask about the USA.. it would be just inside the Top 20 in last place tied for 19th with Canada, both at 47% smartphone penetration per capita of unique smartphone owners. 

Japan is not representative of the level of its handset market as normal 'featurephones' ie dumbphones in Japan are often more advanced than average smartphones outside of Japan, typically waterproof with NFC and WiFi and 4G and full internet and apps etc, even on their 'basic phones'. But by the strict defintion of what is a smartphone, yes Japan is ranked tied for 23rd and has 42% penetration per capita of unique users.

Finland is also now a special case. It used to feature near the top in most mobile stats including smartphones but during the Nokia mess, many loyal Nokia consumers in Finland preferred the 'real Nokia' Asha featurephones than the Windows Phone based Lumia smartphones, and thus Finland has regressed and fallen quite far from its Nordic peers in this table. Finland is at rank 17 with 50% smartphone ownership per capita of unique users.

Malaysia once again leads the Emerging World market, at 36% per capita, ahead of China 33% and Colombia and South Africa both at 31%.

TOP 12 LARGEST SMARTPHONE MARKETS BY UNIQUE OWNERS

Country . . . . . . Unique Smartphone Users
China . . . . . . . . 450.4 Million
USA . . . . . . . . . 148.5 Million
India . . . . . . . . . . 85.9 Million
Japan . . . . . . . . . 52.9 Million
Russia . . . . . . . . 50.4 Million
Brazil . . . . . . . . . 41.5 Million
Indonesia . . . . . . 38.5 Million
UK . . . . . . . . . . . 35.8 Million
Germany . . . . . . .35.3 Million
South Korea . . . . 32.4 Million
Nigeria . . . . . . . . 31.1 Million
Mexico . . . . . . . . 30.7 Million

Rest of World . . 558.1 Million

Total uniques . .1,591 Million smartphone owners (who own 1.83 B total smartphones)

Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 21 August 2014, based significantly on TNS survey data as of May 2014
This table may be freely shared
 
Essentially two thirds of the total global smartphone ownership (65%) live in those 12 countries with the biggest smartphone unique user base. China has 3 times the number of smatphone unique owners than number 2, the USA. India, while its per-capita smartphone unique ownership is the lowest rate at 7% out of the 50 countries in this survey, is stil the third largest country by installed base of smartphone unique users at 86 million. Where did you think of launching your app or service again? Nigeria, Mexico, Indonesia all hit the Top 12, alongside the BRIC countries.

REGIONAL SPLIT OF SMARTPHONE OWNERSHIP

Region . . . . . . . . . Unique SmPh Owners . . . Pct of Total Pop . . Second SmPhones . . Total Smarphones
West Europe . . . . . 243 Million . . . . . . . . . . . 49% . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Million . . . . . . . . . 342 Million
East Europe . . . . . 114 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . 39% . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Million . . . . . . . . . .122 Million
North America . . . . 163 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . 47% . . . . . . . . . . 25 Million . . . . . . . . . 188 Million
Latin America . . . . . 77 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . 24% . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Million . . . . . . . . . . 82 Million
APAC Advanced . .  124 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . 50% . . . . . . . . . . 50 Million . . . . . . . . . 174 Million
Asia Emerging . . . . 689 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . 20% . . . . . . . . . . 48 Million . . . . . . . . . 737 Million
Middle East . . . . . . . 50 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . 24% . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Million . . . . . . . . . . 54 Million
Africa . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Million . . . . . . . . . . . .21% . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Million . . . . . . . . , 128 Million

TOTAL UNIQUE . . 1,578 Million (1.6 Billion). . . . 22% . . . . . . . . . 245 Million . . . . . . . 1,827 Million (1.8 Billion)

Total Smartphones 1,833 Million (1.8 Billion) - includes multiple ownership

Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 21 August 2014, based significantly on TNS survey data as of May 2014
This table may be freely shared

Yes, we now can see the regoinal smartphone ownership data too, by unique owners and by percent of total regional population per capita, Advanced Asia-Pacific region is world leader where 50% of total population alive already owns at least one smartphone. West Europe close behind at 49%. North America next at 47%. Africa is last, but even in Africa, across the whole population, one in five today owns a smartphone! Wow.

For those who want deeper data on handset industry my TomiAhonen Phone Book statistical volume is updated every 2 years in the summer. the last edition was 2012, the new 2014 edition is coming soon. If you buy the 2012 edition now, you will receive both for the same low price, the 2012 edition immediately and the 2014 edition as it is released in some weeks from now. To see what kind of info it contains, see this link TomiAhonen Phone Book.

Comments

[Mus'ab Samara]

That's really a good article about Smartphone statistics which vary between the countries around the world . Smartphone manufacturers would get many benefits of these stats.

Good Job tomi.

[abdul muis]

@Tomi

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prHK25049014

Phablets Are So Yesterday: More Users in Asia Now Hold Tablets to Their Faces to Make Calls, IDC Reports

20 Aug 2014

Singapore and Hong Kong, August 20, 2014 – Large smartphones (otherwise known as phablets), are already a growing trend in Asia, having outshipped notebooks and tablets last year. But IDC finds that now even larger devices, tablets of 7” screen sizes and above, are increasingly shipping with cellular voice capabilities, and such devices are getting more traction in the Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APeJ) region, breaching the 25% mark in the second quarter of 2014.

According to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker report, about 13.8 million units of tablets were shipped in the APeJ region in Q2 2014, of which nearly 25% (around 3.5 million units) had voice calling over cellular networks as an option built-in to the device. This translates to more than 60% growth on a year-on-year basis in unit terms for this category of tablets, which also incidentally happen to be 100% Android-based.

“Tablets that allow voice calls over cell networks have been around for a while now, as the first generation of Samsung Tabs did have that option, albeit only activated through a Bluetooth headset,” says Avinash K. Sundaram, Senior Market Analyst of Client Devices team at IDC Asia/Pacific.

(cut---)
more at: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prHK25049014

[E.Casais]

I jumped at the site right after reading the introduction, and after a moment of awe started to have strong misgivings: China at 70% smartphone ownership and 66% PC ownership? Colombia 45% smartphone and 75% PC?

As you state, these stats are very heavily skewed. I am not sure we get that consistent a result by replacing figures by the stats from other sources for a selected group of countries.

"But by the strict definition of what is a smartphone"

And what would that "strict" definition be?

[AndThisWillBeToo]

@tomi
"during the Nokia mess, many loyal Nokia consumers in Finland preferred the 'real Nokia' Asha featurephones than the Windows Phone based Lumia smartphones, and thus Finland has regressed"

Seriously Tomi, visit Finland. You have no clue what you are talking about. Most sold phones since 2010 have been cheap Androids, not Ashas.
http://www.elisa.fi/ir/pressi/?o=5120.00&did=16960

[baron99]

FYI, An interesting analysis of some very recent microsoft propaganda. It clearly demonstrates that microsoft is a company that can not be trusted. Nothing has changed!

http://www.forbes.com/sites/benkepes/2014/08/22/google-comes-out-swinging-about-microsoft-customer-win-claims/?partner=yahootix

[Winter]

@baron99
"It clearly demonstrates that microsoft is a company that can not be trusted. Nothing has changed! "

MS marketing (just MS?) does not use the concept of "true" or "false" as they are part of a larger abstraction called "reality". MS have found that "reality" has never been helpful in selling MS products.

Therefore, MS does not use any concept related to "reality" in any of its marketing material.

[RottenApple]

Seriously: Microsoft has been caught in the act.

Now please point to some big corporation that doesn't employ such misleading antics to prettify its numbers, especially when it comes to marketing, as this is generally aimed at people who have to make important decisions and often lack the common sense to see through such schemes.

[Spawn]

@abdul muis

Thats an amazing bad article. Out of air they draw the conclusion that because tablets have phone-units buildin and this are sold that people make calls with tablets. Unbelievable bad article.

Context is mobile internet via prepaid phone cards. That you can use this setup also to make voice calls doesn't mean its the driving force.

This is the case since many many years. And now IDC finally notices it too and then they draw that conclkusion? Serious? That is so bad it hurts.

[darkborn]

@Tomi

http://is.gd/croatia_for_tommy

I really don't get it why you did not include Croatia in:
"UNIQUE SMARTPHONE OWNERSHIP STATISTICS BY COUNTRY AND AS PERCENT OF POPULATION"

I made graph from same source, for some of countries you selected, but I just took few EU countries that are in the neighbourhood. Some are bigger, but some are also smaller then Cro, so "Very small countries are not included" is not a valid argument.

Pitty, because you have a great influence at Croatia, because of MS-Nokia case: I suppose that Croatia was planned to be Microsoft's test market for Win-Phone platform... it did not happened because people started to link real facts from your blog (instead MS propaganda).

Kind regards anyway :-)

[baron99]

WP continues with the walking dead - but the WP carcass is looking worse and worse :-)

http://www.zdnet.com/huawei-says-windows-phone-is-unprofitable-and-difficult-report-7000032961/

Obviously the market speaks but microsoft does not listen ...NO ONE WANTS A WINDOWS PHONE!

[AndThisWillBeToo]

No one wants a Tizen phone either.

[baron99]

That's true according to the article too! So it is more than NO ONE WANTS A WINDOWS PHONE! :-)

[baron99]

...BTW the parade of "disastrous Windows versions" is expected to continue... I found the article title very informative.

http://www.eweek.com/pc-hardware/windows-9-is-badly-needed-assuming-it-actually-works-2.html

[telemall pakistan]

good sharing nice job

[Simon]

is there a way to extract the raw data ? @ author: did you copy paste the numbers ? Thanks!