Nielsen's Founds on Asia's Smartphone Utilization

After InMobi released a report on smartphone user’s habit in Indonesia, it’s now Nielsen’s turn to do the same. Not limited to Indonesia, Nielsen made a report on 39 countries in the world, 13 of them are in Asia, including Indonesia. Method used is, even though not mentioned explicitly, still mentioning about ads impression on mobile platform.

As reported by Asia Media Journal, the highlighted finding is the fact that smartphone managed to win over feature phone in some Asian countries. At least in Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan, the percentage of smarphone users reached more than 50%. China as the biggest potential market in the world comes next with smartphone user reach of 42%. Indonesia is still a bit behind with only 19% of smartphone user compared to feature phone user that reach 81%. More data shows that 22% of cell phone user in Indonesia uses it to access the internet in the last month.

Vishal Bali, Managing Director of Nielsen Telecom Industry Group for APMEA region, in his comment on smartphone usage in Asia mentioned, “Today, location based service is most likely utilized by smartphone user in mature market such as Korea, Japan, Singapore and Chine. Meanwhile, other Asian market such as Indonesia and Malaysia, the usage is more focused on social media and search. But both are expected to follow the trend (location based trend) soon when the availability of such service increases.”

From some data presented inside the report, to be honest, the most interesting one is the description on many smartphone platforms marketshare in Asian countries. In Indonesia, it is reported that 58% smartphone user still use Symbian, followed by 16% of BlackBerry user and 11% Android user. These numbers is followed by 4% of iOS user and 3% of Windows Mobile (and Windows Phone) user.

Apparently, according to Nielsen’s finding, in many countries in Asia, Symbian based smartphone still dominates the market. Other than Indonesia, Symbian still has biggest potential market in Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippine and India. BlackBerry also has significant existence in Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippine. In East Asia region, Android dominates every country including Korea, China and Japan. The only market where iOS wins is Singapore.