First Time Anywhere: 12 Biggest Tech/Media Platforms by Audience Reach, aka the 2 Billion Plus Club

Time to publish another first, as the first ever source for a statistic related to tech, mobile, media and advertising. As I do my various workshops and seminars, my clients invariably love my numbers and the one they have most asked for, was a comparison of the different media and communication platforms. Because there wasn't one. And it was a difficult task to try to do. Now I have done it. We have the 12 tech and media with largest reach.

Let me first show why this was nearly impossible before. You would start off with a series of pretty nice numbers, until you understand that some numbers in media are too good while other numbers are too bad. We reading this blog regularly, know that in mobile for example the total count of 7.6 billion mobile subscribers for a planetary human population of 7.4 billion human beings, does not mean there are 7.6 billion humans with a mobile phone. Its not possible, some obviously have two phones or two or more accounts, and some mobile accounts nowadays are used for means that do not involve a human using 'a mobile device' but rather some mobile connections go into various telematics uses like inserted into cars or in our metering devices etc. And this blog was the first to publish mobile unique counts and I have had that data in my Almanac series from its beginning for example. At one side we measure numbers that are too large, like also say the internet count. Many of us have a laptop and a smartphone and use the internet on both. And this can be many ways, we can have a work PC and home PC, separately from our personal laptop, can also have the tablet; and in our pockets can have two smartphones. While we use the internet often primarily on just one or two devices, we, an individual human, can use easily several access methods. Thus if we count total internet users, the number gets too high, and the actual UNIQUE user count is smaller.

But at the other side, we measure numbers which are too small and the actual reach of a given media or technology is far larger than its installed base or its consumption statistics. A newspaper is a perfect example. The total readership of any published newspaper is significantly higher than its circulation, because often we share the newspaper with others. Our family reads (sections of) the same newspaper, or we share the same paper at a coffee shop or the dentist or the bus etc. So when we compare say the internet to newspapers, we need to correctly adjust the internet audience 'downwards' to remove multiple users, but we need also to correctly adjust the newspaper audience 'upwards' to correctly count its total reach, not just its purchased circulation copies (or free copies for free newspapers). This is typical of many mass media. Televisions are counted by household, not by individual 'TV devices' we own. A single working adult could easily own two TV sets ie 2 TVs for one person. But in a large family of 10 in say India, they could have one TV shared by ten. So now we would need to do the 'household conversion' which is dramatically different in a country where the population is shrinking like say Japan or one where the population is dramatically exploding like in Nigeria.  Yes there are some measurements of TV by household penetration rates but there are almost none by audience reach (my Almanac has had for years its highly popular chapter of the Digital Divide that has been exploring these numbers to a modest degree already, like TV penetration rate per household across the rich and emerging worlds; or the internet penetration or mobile phones etc). And certainly none that compare TV household reach to internet reach to newspaper reach. And that all pales in the trouble of measuring the largest media and tech of all time, mobile, which is not only growing so fast, few can keep up with its numbers, but we have BOTH problems of measurement.

Not that many experts of our industry remember that mobile not only has the 'multiple accounts to one person' problem it ALSO has the SHARED mobile problem. This is too easy to forget by most analysts because the behavior is totally alien to us. You and I will not share our phones, not even with our spouces or family members. But in poor parts of the world the poorest may only afford one used handset for the whole family. The dad will have that phone and then it is SHARED with the other family members if the wife wants to talk to her sister or the eldest son wants to call his friend from school. Nobody has measured these concurrent dimensions for mobile except me, of course, the man who obsesses about mobile numbers..

So with all that ado, lets celebrate a new number shared by TomiAhonen Consulting with the world. What are the 12 largest media and tech platforms in the world, by reach of their unique audience, at the start of this year 2016?. As this is the first time this measurement is ever shared by any analyst of any tech or media space, lets do it with proper style, eh? I'll do the list as a Top 12 list starting from number 12 and moving on up to number 1.

12 LARGEST TECH WHEN MEASURED BY UNIQUE AUDIENCE OR UNIQUE REACH

In at number 12: Android. Those who know this blog well, know that Android smartphone current installed base is just out, fresh numbers by TomiAhonen Consulting for October 31, 2016, at 2.2 Billion active devices. (I am among the only sources that does the installed base for smartphone OS platforms). But that is only smartphones. Android also powers tablets! And we don't want the active user count that includes multiple devices owned by one person. What is the unique user count of Android. That according to the TomiAhonen Almanac 2016 edition is... drumroll... 2.1 Billion unique Android users. (PS Apple fans, All Apple devices reach half that but iPhone alone only a bit over 500 million active devices in use). (PSPS Windows users - Windows on all platforms is way smaller than Android now, Windows has already peaked)

What about number 11? We jump quite a bit for the next reach. It clocks in at 2.5 Billion. What reaches 2.5 Billion unique humans on the planet? Its email. Yes trusty old email used from PCs to now increasingly also smartphones. Not total email account number, but unique email reach. If you use email to reach your clients or patients or voters, you get to 2.5B unique humans on the planet, many of us then who have again, of course multiple email accounts.

So we get to number 10. Its the technology that was said to 'change everything' (it didn't. But it changed many things yes). The internet. Yes there are well over 3 billion connected to the internet by now but not by unique user count. TomiAhonen Consulting has counted the unique internet user numbers for years, adjusting for multiple device ownership and usage. And for the start of this year, the internet had 2.8 Billion unique users. Understand now when you consider ANY of your fave internet tech ideas in context. Facebook, is by definition smaller by unique users than the total internet unique users, because FB is an internet service. It does not fit inside our Top 12. Same goes for Google search or Yahoo or Amazon or Twitter or whatever is on the internet. TOTAL unique audience reach by the internet is only 2.8 Billion. It only clocks the internet into our Top 12 low at number 10. Does not (yet) reach even half the planet.

UPDATE - We had a quick discussion with my dear friend Torgo, ie Dan Appelquist the author formerly of Vodafone and O2 who is now with Samsung. We chatted on Twitter, about the internet numbers. He wanted to know how many of this 2.8 Billion unique internet user count is mobile users with modern browsers on reasonably fast networks. Well, the Almanac tells us that 300 million use internet only from a PC ie never use mobile, so lets remove those. That leaves us with 2.5 Billion. Of those there still are some who are on WAP and some who are not on 3G and some even not on 2.5G GPRS/EDGE. In rough terms I'd say thats now under 200 million of those, so we'd be at about 2.3 Billion unique humans who access the internet via mobile phone (excluding tablets) who use a modern HTML browser (excluding WAP) and are on a reasonably fast connetion typically 3G or faster but also including 2.5G GPRS/EDGE. Note, this is still well more than total unique users of Android on smartphones and tablets, combined, and by a clear margin. Why? Because iPhone users also have browsers, and there are plenty of 'featurephone' mid-priced dumbphones that have a full HTML browser. So for Torgo: the number of unique mobile internet users on phones with modern HTML connectivity is about 2.3 Billion (or 82% of all unique internet users). 


But ahead of the internet by reach of unique audience is... MMS. Yes, at 2.9 Billion unique audience, we have MMS. I do not mean that you and I SHARE PICTURES on MMS. MMS is not the 'Picture Messaging Service'. It is not 'PMS' haha. It is MMS, Multimedia Messaging Service. MULTIMEDIA. Delivering MEDIA to mobile users. Videos, pictures, coupons, boarding passes, offers, QR codes, web links, sounds. MMS is a MEDIA platform that yes, reaches a LARGER UNIQUE AUDIENCE THAN THE INTERNET. (Oh, and MMS as an industry is larger than say.. total smartphone apps, haha... so don't think MMS is dead or stupid. Did you know Air Asia the largest discount airline in Asia, has stopped using human check-in counters at its KLIA-2 hub in Kuala Lumpur? Yes, they don't DO HUMAN check-in anymore. Why? Mobile! Most of their check-in is delivered via mobile phones, and if not, you can also do internet check in or use a kiosk at the airport. No human check-in anymore!). Yes, advertising, yes airline boarding passes, yes coupons.

Gosh, yes, how's this for an idea - gift cards! I just heard from my friend John Stuckey in Australia who has a company that does mobile gift cards, they are called Crackawines, gift cards to give wine. Great Australian wines. Wanna give a nice gift to your friend via mobile and are in the wine business? Use MMS of course, the person who receives the gift can see the image of the wine label and redeem the gift at a store. How awesome is this? MMS. Has a unique reach of 2.9 Billion humans who USE the service (at least once per month) and note, most who use MMS don't know they are using it, they think they received an SMS with a picture! Many companies even talk about MMS this way, they say we send SMS with pictures. (They actually send MMS). Or an airline will say, take your boarding pass via mobile, sent via text message. You end up receiving.. an MMS. More active users than the internet! That is our MMS. More money than total apps industry. That is our 'failure' haha, of MMS. MMS reaches 2.9 Billion unique humans (or nearly three times the reach of say Whatsapp globally. Do not confuse heavy USAGE by addicted users, on Whatsapp, for REACH which is what any media or advertiser wants. MMS has reach).

THE 3 BILLION UNIQUE USER OR AUDIENCE CLUB

Lets move on, what about number 8, now we cross into the rare 3 Billion sphere of giant reach. At 3.2 Billion we get total planetary reach of all digital/satellite/cable TV systems, combined. Premium TV services (not counting terrestrial broadcast TV that we receive via a standard antenna). if you are say a CNN or HBO or the Discovery Channel, you are at a FRACTION of this number. Because obviously no cable TV service is in every country on every cable system. But cable TV as a platform (including satellite and digital TV systems and internet TV broadcasters) reaches yes 3.2 Billion unique humans. 

Then at number 7, just barely ahead of cable/satellite TV, but on its decline, we have the total reach of... landline telephone. Landline telephone has still an active reach of 3.25 Billion humans living in households where a fixed landline telephone connection is still up and running (increasingly younger families are 'cutting the cord' ie going mobile-only in their telephone needs, a trend first observed in Finland and first reported .. by me). Now, if you try to call those 3.25 Billion people on their still-functional landline phone, you'll often find that the call is not answered because we have learned that nobody important calls us on the landline phone, as we all have personal mobile phones, anyone who needs 'us' calls us directly on the mobile. That is why many families have the situation where the dad is angrily yelling out at the kids, will someone please answer the phone? And the kids know not to answer, its not for them, its likely a sales call anyway. But if you DO do telemarketing for example, now for the first time we have the table where all the different communication tech are compared and ranked. Fixed landline telecoms reaches yes, 3.25 Billion unique humans in the world. Not that they'd all answer your call, but that reach is stlll live today. It will be less next year.

But right immediately above landlines, in at number 6, we have that tech among these 12, that has the highest proportion of reach among kids. Driven by very young kids who won't own phones or go to the internet, but can watch a Disney DVD, yes, we have the reach of DVD/Blueray disk players, at 3.4 Billion unique humans globally. If you want to publish your content, a movie or TV show for example, via a DVD, then you have a potential reach of 3.4 Billion human beings worldwide.

REACH LITERALLY HALF OF THE PLANET WITH THESE: THE TOP 5

None of those major tech reach half of humans alive, but these last 5 giants do. In at number 5, reaching a whopping 3.7 Billion unique human beings, and yes, literally reaching half of all human beings alive on the planet, is the reach of mobile voice calls. If do a service using mobile voice, its active user base is 3.7 Billion humans (many of us no longer use mobile voice at all, some are only using internet voice services like Skype, others use their mobile devices only for data services like SMS text messging or the internet etc, and obviously some of the mobile accounts are not even connected to a 'phone'). Mobile voice, yes, reaches 3.7 Billion unique humans but note that this is not the primary use of a 'mobile phone' or a 'cellphone' anymore. Lets stop calling it a mobile 'phone' lets just call it a 'mobile'. We use it more for things like selfies (ie its more used as a camera) and far far more for messaging than as a voice calling device. But the US elections for example during the month of September, had 2.6 Billion 'robocalls' delivered to American telephones. They were voice recordings, mostly about the election, and these 'advertisements' resulted in about 8 recordings delivered on average to every American alive (whether voting age or not, the recording will not know if you are a registered voter or say an undocumented immigrant housekeeper who happened to answer the phone). Yes, the 5th largest technology by reach, on the planet, is mobile voice telephony services. Voice calls reach 3.7 Billion unique humans today.

THE TOP 4 OF THE 4 BILLION CLUB

And ahead of mobile voice? At 4.1 Billion unique users on the planet, the fourth largest communication or media by reach on the planet is SMS text messaging! SMS texting is not dying because of Whatsapp (what silly nonsense, SMS is four TIMES larger by reach of ACTIVE users globally, most who have shifted MOST of their messaging to Whatsapp, even most of those can still be reached via SMS, who still happily use SMS for such things as televoting or for example authenticating a pin code with their banking. Again, do not mistake USAGE with REACH. Whatsapp has the heaviest usage of messaging. Whatsapp is a peanut compared to SMS by active user reach. If you are a media or advertiser, you want REACH of active user base). Before we get to the Top 3, let me make these two finer points about SMS, SMS text messaging is the largest tech by reach of any INTERACTIVE media platform. And it is the largest tech by reach of any COMMERCE-capable platform ie it can do payments. You can enable your Coca Cola machines to take mobile payments (via SMS, as invented by.. Coca Cola  - in Finland - literally two decades ago. Mobile payments were not invented by Apple three years ago). So SMS text messaging? It today reaches a massive 4.1 Billion active users. That is 55% of the planet's total population alive.

So lets get to the Top 3. At number 3, is radio. FM radio has a global listening audience reach of 4.3 Billion human beings. And it often comes as a surprise that for many in the rich 'West' who see handset makers put FM radio onto their smartphones, they wonder, who uses that? And they do not know that for many people in poor parts of the world like in Bangladesh or Bolivia or Botswana, a family may have their first-ever FM radio of the family, be the one that came 'free' as a function on their new mobile phone that dad just bought. And in many parts of the world, hundreds of millions of people in India for example, the commercial viability of FM radio is not practical for delivery of FM radio at all. Yes, there is NO FM RADIO COVERAGE for parts of the world where literally hundreds of millions of people live. They are too poor to then sustain an ecosystem where they buy the FM radio gadgets and the advertisers could fund the radio stations to offer programing. Still with all that, FM radio is at number 3, the third largest reach of any tech on the planet, of a unique audience of 4.3 Billion human beings.

THE TWO IN THE 5 BILLION UNIQUE AUDIENCE SET

Who is at number 2? Its ... drumroll ... television. Yes, when all forms of TV are included, broadcast 'over-the-air' basic TV to cable and satellite systems, as a whole TV is the second largest media and communication platform on the planet, by unique audience reach. TV reaches 5.2 Billion unique humans on the planet. That is 70% of the planet. A large portion of those are kids by the way, in countries of large family size, the utility of one TV to give entertainment for the whole family is considerable. But TV is number 2. And you know me, and this blog, then number 1 can only be...

THE ONLY ONE REACHING LITERALLY 3 OF EVERY 4 HUMANS ALIVE

Biggest reach on the planet? It had to be .. drumroll .. more drumroll .. Tomi give us the number already! .. more drumroll .. its mobile of course. Mobile phones reach a unique audience of 5.7 Billion human beings, when all uses of mobile are included, SMS and voice calls at the top, and when multiple phones are removed, telematics accounts are removed, and multiple accounts (SIM cards) are removed; but when reach of shared users of mobile phones in poor families, are then added in. Its not even close to number 2. Mobile, yes mobile has a reach of 5.7 Billion humans globally! If you want to sell something, send a media, show some news, make an advertisement, send a coupon, or offer a customer, patient, student, voter etc to enact with you, the largest reach media and tech, by unique audience is.. mobile. 77% of the planet today can be reached by mobile. Note that some who use mobile messaging have stopped using (paid cellular) voice altogether, while others who use mobile cannot use messaging because they are illiterate and ONLY use voice, etc, but total reach, mobile rules. And among mobile's individual services, obviously SMS is the largest among mobile far bigger than voice calls, MMS, the internet or something like an app on Android etc.

MISSING FROM THE TOP 12: FACEBOOK, WINDOWS, AMAZON, SKYPE, YOUTUBE, WHATSAPP ETC

Lets also note who is  NOT in the Top 12. Facebook is not one of the 12 largest tech and media on the planet, not even close. Twitter isn't on the list, neither is Instagram or Snapchat. Google search is not on the list, doesn't make the top 12 most widest-reaching tech and media, by unique users. Windows. Windows on PCs and tablets and even the rare smartphone. Windows once was a Top 12 largest used tech on the planet, now? Nowhere close. Pokemon Go was the big craze this summer but it doesn't crack the Top 12. Neither does the most-played downloaded game of all time, Angry Birds doesn't get into the Top 12. Skype isn't there. Amazon doesn't get into Top 12. Apple with all its iGadgets and iToys doesn't climb into the Top 12. Whatsapp isn't in the Top 12. YouTube does not fit into the Top 12. All those are tech darling stories of yes, biggish numbers, for a tech IT industry, but not the 12 largest. They are big but not giants. This is your list of the real planetary giants. Not the pretenders. Not those who MAY some day be big. These are the only 12 tech that each has at least 2 Billion unique active users, audience members or reach.

That is the big news today. Here is the table you want: Feel free to share this with all your media and advertising colleagues, they will love you for finding this information. Many in media and advertising call this table the 'holy grail' of the media reach stats. It seemed like an impossible number ever to pin down. Yes, you're welcome. Here, courtesy of TomiAhonen Consulting, as of 5 December 2016, for the first time ever published by any analyst, the 12 largest tech and media by reach of their unique audiences, in one table:

LARGEST MEDIA AND TECH BY REACH OF UNIQUE AUDIENCE, JANUARY 1, 2016:
1 . . . Mobile  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.7 Billion (77% of Humans Alive)
2 . . . Television . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Billion (70%)
3 . . . Radio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Billion (58%)
4 . . . SMS Text Messaging . . . . . . . . 4.1 Billion (51%)
5 . . . Mobile Voice Calls . . . . . . . . . . 3.7 Billion (50%)
6 . . . DVD & Blueray Player . . . . . . . 3.4 Billion (46%)
7 . . . Landline Telephone . . . . . . . . . 3.35 Billion (45%)
8 . . . Cable/Satellite TV . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Billion (44%)
9 . . . MMS Multimedia Messaging . . 2.9 Billion (39%)
10 . . Internet  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.8 Billion (38%)
11 . . Email  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 Billion (34%)
12 . . Android  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Billion (28%)
Source: TomiAhonen Almanac 2016 (page 103)
This table may be freely shared

So thats the big news. You're welcome. This information has not been anywhere, and just watch the expression on the faces of your colleagues in media or advertising when they learn that this information EXISTS now!. Send them here to read this blog! It will make YOU the hero to them, for discovering this gold.

The TomiAhonen Almanac 2016 edition that just came out a few months ago, had this data in it, so those who bought the Almanac already had it (and those of my clients who used me in their workshops recently), but no other source, free or paid, has published this info in any source, no matter what you paid. And its only one of 100 tables and charts in the TomiAhonen Almanac 2016 which of course has all the mobile numbers you could want from consumers to devices to services to revenues to apps to traffic etc. See more here TomiAhonen Almanac 2016.

That is what I do. I go for the numbers. And once again, this blog has broken a new statistic for the world, that was never calculated before. You're welcome! Consider it a 'Pikkujoululahja' a gift from me, for 'Little Christmas' as we celebrate 'pre-Christmas' in Finland around this time of the year. And yes, this is the Top 12. If you want the Top 20, then you do have to go through all that pain of spending a totally massive crippling expense of .. 10 Euros haha, to buy the Almanac which then adds the unique count of all tech that reach 1 Billion active users or more, the other 8 into that top 20. The Almanac is here.

Comments

[Winter]

Tomi,

I do not understand why the reach of SMS is different from mobile in total. Are there people with a mobile subscription but no SMS?

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Winter

Good question. Its active users. Every mobile phone can be used to receive SMS but many are not used that way. Note a significant part of the emerging world is illiterate and has no use for text based communication. That is why the big differences both in 'mobile vs SMS' and 'mobile vs voice calls'.

Also note the far smaller 'reach' of SMS active users, vs active mobile accounts of SMS, because most who have 2 phones will use SMS at some times on either or all of their accounts. So SMS (and to a lesser extent MMS) get larger total active user numbers than unique users (similar also to email accounts)

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Winter]

@Tomi
Thanks, I had indeed forgotten to account for illiteracy.

[Pekka]

0.4 billion mobile phone users have a phone that is capable of receiving SMS but not capable of receiving voice calls (4.1 Bn vs. 3.7 Bn). Care to explain why so?

[SybianLover]

@Tomi
You might be interested in this:
WhatsApp extends Symbian support but not Windows Phone support.
WhatsApp on Windows Phone dies 31-Dec-2016 whereas Symbian support will be extended to at least June 2017.

Source:
http://mynokiablog.com/2016/12/06/whatsapp-extends-support-for-series-40-symbian-s60-till-june-30-2017/

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Wayne

Very good point. With Facebook yes, you could reach the 1.5 Billion unique user level roughly where they are today, 'easiest' via one contact point and one company. None of the top technologies can be used via just one contact. To do a TV ad, you would need probably every broadcast network in every country, but even in countries of one network (or only one TV network out of several that is allowed to carry ads, as some countries have) it wold mean 200+ countries and say 500+ networks.

With DVD retail it would be a different thing. You would not need national TV but you would need to be carried by the major national DVD retail channels in each of the 200+ countries. So it would be more of a typical hard goods sales/distribution problem (and opportunity).

Now on reach, not all who use Android are on the Google Play store but the net Play Store account users, adjusted for unique Play Store registered users, would yield in very rough terms a similar scale to Facebook Unique users. So Google would have somewhat a similar type of reach as a single vendor to reach the highest maximum. The difference being, that Facebook could 'guarantee' its roughly 1.5 Billion; Google could via Play Store get to roughly the same, but it would have parallel capability via a handful of other forked OS app stores etc to reach another half a Billion to get us about to 2 Billion, something that Facebook can not get out of its limit of 1.5B

On Email the issue is somewhat different. You could get to a large portion of the total unique Email users if you had some arrangement with the major email providers like Gmail and Yahoo and Hotmail etc. But you would not get to the private corporate enterprise and educational email systems that are plentiful. BUT differing from TV and Radio, with email if you have somebody's email address, you can write to them directly, and essentially reach everybody without any 'barrier' (excepting for any government internet censorship blocking systems). It is a totally different approach, would need 'permission' seeked from every one of the 2.5B unique email users (requiring far in excess of 5 Billion total requests with us often receiving the same request on our different email accounts). But you would not have any 'entity' to get permission nor to deny you. And because email is a personal communication system not a broadcast system, the email providers would almost certainly not be willing to 'spam' you without prior approval and permission from each user, and any email services which are paid email providers, would be incredibly reluctant to let their system be used by third parties to send any 'broadcast emails' to their total user base. But individually, there could definitely be an opt-in database and then as email transmission is free, then its just a matter of scale to reach each of the 2.5 Billion who use email. Here the opt-in model then takes its toll and time, but when done well, like in Japan, McDonalds with mobile ad opt-in, you can get a large part of a nation's user base to opt in and over time this can be somewhere around half of the total customers of your service or product.

That same model applies to some degree with SMS and MMS too, except that now each sent message costs a sending fee (and in some luddite countries, still the received message is charged as well, that charged to the person receiving the SMS or MMS, while this usually now is included in a 'bundle' of 'free' messages it is still outrageous and stupid and short-sighted by the greedy operators and industry). So if you get the opt-in, you don't need the operators in the middle (oh, same also applies, now that I think about it, to phone calls, fixed landline calls and mobile calls, all you need is the phone number).

Then there is overlap. If you wanted to reach say the half-way population mark, 3.7 Billion people, you could call every mobile phone number. You'd hit some of us twice on both of our phones, but you'd get to that unique 3.7B mobile phone voice call user level. If you went to a larger number, TV, Radio, SMS, you didn't need to contact every user, to get to 3.7B. BUT if you tried to do it from the smaller numbers, the danger is you hit the same users instead.

So to give the example you used, Facebook. If we start with 1.5B Facebook users and to keep numbers simple lets say Google Search has 1B unique users and Whatsapp has 1B unique users. So you could reach mathematically a target audience of 3.5B people via these three groups but they would all be INTERNET service providers. Their cumulative overlapping unique user number would be... constrained by the unique INTERNET user number which we see is 2.8B. You can't get to 3.5B in any way, using only internet providers whatever you would add to that, if you added Twitter and Instagram and Amazon and Yahoo and YouTube, because they ALL are Internet services, and you'd only get to 2.8 Billion and then keep hitting those same 2.8B again and again, but never getting beyond it.

So an interesting study would be (and eventually by someone, will be) the overlap and space beyond those groups I listed (and others in the 1B class like Facebook, YouTube, Google Search and Whatsapp). So instead of combining Facebook with say YouTube, you'd probably get a far larger total audience with far less overlap, if you combined Facebook with DVD audience (although with DVD the unique additional users would be disproportionately kids, but lets not now worry about the AGE of any target demographics haha).

This is the type of analysis and thinking I was hoping to spark with this posting and help the industry understand more about the increasingly complex options they have in a media strategy. I'm sure we'll have more of these discussions in this thread and in future years of the updates to these numbers, and help drive that understanding. Eventually these types of measurements will be normal in every 'new tech' expert's presentation slide deck, similar to how my original slide analysis of the mobile vs internet graphs (that I call the 'fundamental curves') have become the standard for most tech presentations today but nobody except me and my Nokia consultants did 16 years ago.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Pekka

Good question but you misunderstood. Its active users, unique active users. There are 5.7 Billion mobile phone unique owners and users. Not all use voice calls, not all use SMS text messaging. So you should not compare the 3.7B unique voice user number to 4.1B unique SMS user number, rather you should compare BOTH to the total MOBILE number.

Every one of the 5.7 Billion humans who has a mobile phone and current (active) mobile phone account - can be reached by voice calls but only 3.7 Billion are using voice calls (65%). Obviously it means, of those people who have at least one phone and at least one account, one in three does NOT put any cellular voice call minutes into the network. They can't be reached by mobile voice. What do they do? Some use voice services on their mobile but not the cellular voice type. So they use Skype and other VOIP services if they need voice, and will not use cellular voice call services at all. Some have accounts that don't include a voice minutes allowance at all, and use their phones only for data based services like Facebook or Whatsapp or SMS. Some who have voice will not use it, and prefer to only use SMS or email or Whatsapp. Some do their total mobile usaga only via Facebook, there are even 'Facebook phones' sold in some Asian countries for these type of people that have a Facebook button and have an 'unlimited Facebook' dataplan.

So the comparison is not SMS users not using voice, it is TOTAL mobile owners, not using voice.

The SAME mechanic applies to SMS but with different constraints of course. At the top end, SMS user numbers stopped growing when we hit the limit of literacy. So the reason only 4.1 Billion of the 5.7 Billion unique mobile owners use SMS, is literacy. But of all who own a phone and have an active mobile account/subscription (either prepaid or postpaid) 71% do use SMS text messaging. It means obviously that 29% of all who have a mobile account and phone, do not use SMS. Note, every one of those phones can RECEIVE an SMS but the user doesn't use it and would not react to the blinking envelope notice if an SMS message did arrive. Note that a significant part of those people are illiterate and to them, the phone has plenty of blinking lights and buttons they do not understand.

Now, some of mobile messaging users never joined SMS (mainly some Japanese users who had full email free on their phones before SMS came to Japan) and some are Americans mostly older employed people who didn't have messaging-obsessed kids, who came to mobile messaging via a Blackberry and grew straight into email. The new growth in mobile messaging is the instant messenger style apps and services, originally achieved mass market status in some countries by Blackberry Messenger and now reaching the 1 Billion user level globally by its biggest star, Whatsapp. So a tiny slice of SMS has been cannibalized by a stronger messenger 'addiction' of Whatsapp, and another tiny slice of the mobile messaging pie was held by the milder drug of email. Most of its is of course SMS by active users. And note, if you never send one SMS to a friend anymore, but use SMS once per month to authorize a credit card PIN, you ARE an active SMS user. That is all that matters for a media platform. Can you reach someone. SMS is by far the largest-reaching interactive digital platform, about 45% larger reach than the internet, more than twice as big as Facebook and 4 times larger than say Whatsapp.

So all mobile phones can receive SMS, they are technically able to do it and are on networks that can deliver SMS. So the theoretical reach of SMS would be 5.7 Billion people. Only 4.1 Billion people are the ACTIVE UNIQUE audience who will be opening SMS text messages. That is of cousrse a massive 55% of the whole planet's population, globally, not limited to 'adult population' it is 55% across all ages.

Similarly 5.7 Billion phones are connected to cellular networks that can deliver voice calls. Some of those accounts are not including voice connectivity. So the theoretical reach of voice would be somewhat below 5.7 Billion but not by much. 35% of all who have a mobile phone and account, do not use mobile voice. So one in three of us could not be reached via a mobile voice call, but 3.7 Billion unique humans can be reached that way which is 50% of the planet's population.

I trust this helped answer that question :-)

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Tomi T Ahonen]

PS Pekka

In very rough terms, to reconcile the 5.7B number. If we start with SMS at 4.1B, we add about 1B who do use voice, but do not use SMS. About half are the illiterate part, the other half are users who never got into SMS in the first place (often older people who 'prefer to talk'). That gets us to 5.1B and deals with the voice calls part. Of the last 600 million, roughly 500 million are internet users (note I don't mean full 2.8B internet users, I mean those who don't use SMS, who don't use voice calls, but DO use their mobile for internet based services, and often then only in free WiFi hotspots), mostly Facebook but also other internet services and includes heavy gamers, plus Skype, Whatsapp and other such IM platforms, YouTube etc. And the last about 100 million are email users who don't use voice calls, don't use SMS but do use their phones for email (think of the modern version of the original Blackberry crowd).

So in rough terms: 4.1B SMS users + 1B who use voice but not SMS + 500M who use internet who do not use voice or SMS + 100M who use email but not voice or SMS or internet otherwise = 5.7B total mobile unique users.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi SybianLover

(you may have similar troubled chicklet keyboard as I do, I get tons of typos all the time that I only catch later when something is already posted, and it drives me mad... give me an old-fashioned keyboard that I can strike HARD and it will SHOW the letters that I typed..)

(PS I wonder how many characters I have DELETED in my lifetime, out of typos and retyping.. gosh its certainly more than the length of a full book. A full book of just typos haha)

Hey, thanks! Thats fascinating news. So it means, that Whatsapp has observed they have enough traffic from the dwindling Symbian OS user base, that is not matched by what nominally seems like a larger Windows OS smartphone user base.

Some of this we can understand from the stories that came out about Windows OS. They had that astonishing level of phones shipped that were never activated. So some were never sold, they went into discount bins and eventually were junked. Others were sold and returned and not in use. Others were sold or given out as freebies, and used for a while, but usage ended. Others may be in use but the usage has stopped being a smartphoen - and may be for example that a Lumia smartphone on Windows OS, is only used 'as a pocket camera' because of the good camera. And that owner has a separate phone on Android used for any connected needs (and apps).

Meanwhile what about Symbian? The last Symbian phones were often very top-end premium Nokia very best it made. So phones like the N8, the E9, the 808 Pureview etc. These were incredibly well manufactured (durable) phones, that were very expensive (when initially launched) and if bought in the EMERGING world, they would be seen as super-premium phones of at least same level of luxury appeal as an iPhone or Samsung Galaxy, in many markets Nokia was the top brand not among phones but among ALL brands, ahead of Rolls Royce, Mercedes Benz, IBM and Rolex. Far far above the brands like Apple and Samsung. Those buyers, who spent big money on their Nokia phones, often INTENDED to sell them when used, and get good money selling them, and then upgrade (to the next Nokia) and then in the RESALE market, these were prized top phones of great prestige, like an older BMW or Mercedes will still get good money when its sold as an 5 year old, used car.

So the Symbian phone base was often bought to live long, they were well cared for - especially in emerging markets where phones often were resold when used. Then in the used phone market, they stood the value far stronger than a random HTC or LG or Motorola. So they also have a long life span in the used market.

I had calculated those factors in, when I had my model still isolate Symbian installed base (and the corresponding ultra-short life span of Windows OS). But this is still surprisingly durable slice of the market.

I think there are some issues to it. I think its STRONGLY REGIONAL. I would guess that continentally, Africa will have a sizable Symbian market left that is vastly greater than Windows. And where Lumia did get modest sales in the USA (Windows best market) and modest sales in Europe (Nokia home continent) they were among more affluent buyers, who have had ample opportunity to abandon that silly Windows OS and move onto Android or an iPhone. Those who bought expensive Symbian Nokia smartphones in Africa (or India or poor parts of Asia, Latin America) are far less eager to swap the phones every year or 18 months, and will hold onto their most expensive tech gadget far longer.

Also many other local issues, the Symbian ecosystem supported many local languages, local carrier billing, and had vast arrays of local app developers. They did not migrate to Windows OS on a whole because Windows performed better in US and Europe, and particularly poorly in the Emerging World where Nokia brand and Symbian had a strong foothold. There the Asha featurephone series did far better (in the months that both Lumia and Asha were sold side-by-side Asha actually outsold the Lumia series globally, even though Asha got minimal marketing support and Lumia had the largest promotion of any smartphone brand in history).

I love the numbers, SybianLover, thanks. I'll post a link to my Twitter followers and credit you as having found the story.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[E.Casais]

Well, let us not get carried over with that support of Symbian by Whatsapp.

1) It is only till June 2017. It is just a reprieve.

2) OS whose support is discontinued end 2016 are Windows Phone 7, iOS 6/3GS, Android 2.1, 2.2. All very old platforms. I suspect the market share of WP7 must be truly infinitesimal.

3) Interestingly, Blackberry OS and v10 are given the same reprieve as Symbian.

[sgtrock]

Hi, Tomi;

You misnamed one of your categories. When you discussed the Internet (note the proper capitalization, please, and yes I'm a pedantic network geek from way back. ;-) ), you were really only discussing Web browsing. This is a critical distinction because the Internet is really a communications platform that enables virtually every other category that you have listed.

For example, carrier networks are no longer private networks with no interconnection to the rest of the world. Instead, they share the same IPv4 and IPv6 global address space that the rest of the Internet does. They route traffic to and from each other and the rest of the Internet seamlessly.

Every smartphone has at least one IP address assigned to it. (I just checked mine. It has two IP addresses, one IPv4 and one IPv6.) Any featurephone with with a browser has to have an IP address. Any cable TV or satellite receiver built in the last 10 years will have at least one IP address assigned. Then there's the Internet of Things that has all the marketing people hyperventilating at the thought of doing things like restocking our refrigerators when we're out of milk...

Email and MMS are also enabled via the global Internet. And that doesn't include the more niche applications like sales via gaming, Facebook, Google, etc.

So, if you want to talk about global reach of a communications platform, the Internet wins hands down. It's not even close. No other communications platform is within an order of magnitude.

It is appropriate to talk about global reach of the various services that run on top of it, however. In that case, Web browsing at #10 sounds about right.