Three in four working-age Australians own a smartphone

Nearly three in four (73%) Australians aged between 15 and 65 currently own a smartphone, and this proportion is expected to increase to 93% by 2018, according to Frost & Sullivan.

The research firm also predicts that tablet penetration will climb from 49% of Australian households this year to 80% by 2018.

“Tablet growth will outpace that of smartphones, which are a more mature device closer to maximum penetration,” Frost & Sullivan Senior Research Manager for A/NZ Phil Harpur predicted.

Strong smartphone penetration and solid tablet growth is also contributing to rapid changes in mobile device owners’ consumption habits, he said.

No longer are mobile devices being overwhelmingly used for voice and text, with nearly half of smartphone users reporting that engaging with mobile media is the main way they use their device. And over 50% of smartphone users are consuming videos on sites including YouTube.

“As smartphone functionality continues to improve with higher resolutions and larger screens, faster internet access via 4G networks and higher data downloads, this percentage will increase significantly over the next few years,” Harpur said.

Accessing social networking, browsing news, looking for jobs or houses to rent and downloading or streaming music are other increasingly popular smartphone activities.

At the same time, the core voice and SMS functions of mobile devices are becoming less important to smartphone users, due to the popularity of OTT chat and messaging apps such as WhatsApp.

As in other regions, Android dominates the local smartphone market. Apple still has a sizeable lead in tablets, but its market share is in decline in the face of cheaper competing products. In the last 12 months alone, the iPad’s Australian market share has fallen from 69% to 60%.

Image courtesy of ALT1040