A Pew Research Center report reveals that feature phones continue to dominate markets such as the Philippines and Indonesia
A report released by Pew Research Center revealed that while the number of smartphone users continue to increase in several regions in the world, including Asia Pacific, feature phones maintain a strong position in emerging nations.
“In just the past two years, there has been a vast increase in the share of people in many emerging nations surveyed who report owning a smartphone. Despite these rapid changes, richer countries in the survey still report higher levels of smartphone ownership compared with poorer nations,” the report stated.
A global median of 45 per cent of users claimed to own a mobile phone that is not a smartphone, while 43 per cent claimed to own a smartphone.
Of all surveyed respondents, only 12 per cent claimed to not own a mobile phone of any kind.
The report was based on a survey of mobile phone users’ behaviour in 40 countries. It is compiled through telephone and face-to-face interviews conducted under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates International. The results are based on national samples, unless otherwise noted.
e27 compiled key findings from the report.
As with Internet usage, smartphone ownership is strongly related to a country’s level of wealth.
The highest rates of smartphone ownership are among some of the richest economies being surveyed, with South Korea being a perfect example for Asia Pacific at 88 per cent.
However, the case is different with Japan, where 50 per cent still use feature phone.
Beyond the advanced economies surveyed, smartphone ownership is also relatively high in Malaysia (65 per cent) and China (58 per cent), with the latter being dubbed as world’s largest smartphone market.
Contrary to Malaysia (Singapore was not mentioned in the report), the rest of Southeast Asia tends to be stronger in feature phone ownership. Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia are great examples at 52 per cent, 48 per cent , and 56 per cent respectively.
India also has a relatively low smartphone ownership rate at only 17 per cent. However, it is worth noting that the country remains one of the largest smartphone markets in the world with its one billion citizens.
