Is Asia developing towards mobile, or away from it? Three numbers from the Google-TNS Asia Pacific Mobile App Usage Study suggest an answer: as it expands, it will move towards mobile, not away from it.
The study asked people from across Asia about how they used their apps, revealing how central mobile has become to Asia’s daily life. And in markets where smartphones are only just becoming mainstream, we can expect that trend to strengthen.
We can sum this up in three numbers and two colors in the above chart.
As is common in these kinds of surveys, Korea emerges as the smartphone paradise: they have the second highest smartphone penetration in Asia, the third-highest proportion of people who consider the smartphone their main device, and they install the most apps on their phone.
What’s interesting is India (IN) and Indonesia (ID). They have the lowest smartphone penetration in the survey and also the fewest number of apps installed on their phones (probably a consequence of having devices with far less memory). And yet, for them, the smartphone is more important to their daily life, not less: more smartphone owners in India and Indonesia consider their smartphone to be their primary device than in Singapore and Korea, even though they have fewer apps installed. Even when and if they do buy second devices like PCs and tablets, all their lessons about how the Internet works will come from that small touchscreen.
The mobile-first world of Asia doesn’t seem likely to be losing its center of gravity anytime soon. Of course, each Asian country approaches the mobile Internet differently, and to get a more comprehensive outlook on what’s going on across the region, please read this article as we go through the study’s numbers at Think With Google APAC.
Posted by Masao Kakihara, Senior Research Manager, Market Insights, Google Asia-Pacific