UK smartphone market grows 70%
The UK smartphone market has grown 70% over the past year to more than 11 million subscribers, according to new comScore data.
The comScore study of the smartphone market in Europe reveals that smartphone adoption in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy has grown 32% year on year to 51.6 million subscribers.
France ranks second in growth, with the number of smartphone subscribers up 48% to 7 million. Italy boasts the largest number of smartphone subscribers overall (15 million) but showed the lowest growth at 11%.
Figures from Deloitte, meanwhile, claim that approximately one in five UK consumers now owns a smartphone.
| Smartphone Subscribers (000) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan-09 | Jan-10 | % Change | |
| EU5 | 38,994 | 51,623 | 32% |
| UK | 6,525 | 11,109 | 70% |
| France | 4,842 | 7,140 | 48% |
| Germany | 6,309 | 8,429 | 34% |
| Spain | 7,809 | 9,907 | 27% |
| Italy | 13,510 | 15,037 | 11% |
Looking at monthly subscription fees, comScore found that the high tier (greater than £35 in UK and €50 in Euro currency countries) is not growing as strongly as the mid to low tier. The UK has the highest pace of both mid to low tier adoption (up 76%) and high-tier adoption (up 60%), followed by France (52% and 43%, respectively).
Alistair Hill, senior mobile analyst at comScore, said: “Smartphones are generally seen as luxury devices that come with big price tags and high monthly tariffs, yet the largest segment of the market and the one demonstrating greatest momentum is actually the low to mid tier.
“The growth in these tiers suggests that as smartphones become more affordable to the majority of European consumers, their proliferation will increase considerably and lead to a surge in mobile content and data consumption.
“Such market dynamics offer substantial opportunity for different players in the mobile ecosystem – from operators and manufacturers to publishers and advertisers – and underscore the importance of competing for customers now to engender long-term loyalty.”
Nielsen recently forecast that by the end of 2011, most mobile phones in the US will be smartphones.