Mobile Internet Traffic: Smartphones Only Play a Minor Role on World Stage. .. More Research Needed to Understand Global Usage Patterns

[CC-Conrad Clyburn-MedForeSight]

Colleagues,

As you all know, mHealth has been a hot topic not only for this forum, but many others.  For we who have been involved in the Telemedicine progression over the years, we know that the path to healthcare transformation is not a straightline.  Please see this report on mobile internet usage recently released by the Intelligence Centre Blog that raises the question as to whether "smartphones' have grown beyond a niche application...

CC
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A major intelligence gap exists in the industry today: what mobile subscribers are really doing on their Internet-enabled handsets. While we know that global mobile Internet user numbers are increasing, (according to Informa’s latest mobile Internet research, active users of mobile Internet services are expected to grow from 666 million at end-2009 to 878 million at end-2010), analysing global mobile Internet traffic trends by specific metrics is beset by challenges...

... (See link to):  A comparative analysis of several publicly released trend reports on mobile Internet traffic during 2009 (of varying timeframes) from a variety of companies shows some clear indicators of usage trends by device, content type and geography...

... But analysis of global mobile Internet usage trends is tricky, not least due to the market’s fragmentation and the lack of comprehensive global data based on standard metrics. Different metrics are visible to different companies in the mobile content value chain – not only operators, but also mobile advertising networks, traffic management companies, analytics companies, mobile Internet gateway vendors, mobile Internet services vendors, DPI vendors, mobile content aggregators and more – whose breadth of visibility depends on their type of activity and
geographical reach..

... Our early analysis confirms less-than-surprising mobile Internet consumption trends. Social networking on mobile has been cited as the most popular content type ... 

... Consumption of mobile video content also appears to be undergoing significant growth ... ‘streaming video has become a mainstream medium and is the single most influential
factor driving the need for increased network capacity’.

... However, trends relating to growth of overall usage as well as device popularity sometimes vary from one report to another ...

... the Apple iPhone, which is according to most Western-centric traffic reports ... the preferred device for accessing the mobile Internet, is upstaged by Nokia devices in Asia-Pacific- and Africa-centric- reports. Such reports show the Finnish device manufacturer’s overwhelming prevalence amongst users accessing the mobile Internet in less mature markets – a user base that is undergoing rapid growth...

... Comparing several data sources on ‘global’ usage trends unveils key differences that point
to the inevitable bias of the sources themselves – whether regional or otherwise...

... Although overall mobile data usage is on the rise, not all reported data points to consistent
growth in global mobile Internet usage ... Regional differences are discernible: North America and Asia Pacific appear to lead the mobile Internet market, but growth in these regions might be slowing, while it is picking up in Africa ...

... Smartphone hype may be justified in terms of traffic volume per device, but the devices
remain niche: to suggest that smartphones are the main generators of mobile Internet traffic is to ignore the ‘mass’ mobile Internet market...

... Bringing together disparate data sources under an umbrella of intelligent aggregation and
normalization would begin the process of overcoming bias in usage analysis and building a global picture of traffic trends ...