There has been a huge growth in smartphone take-up and use in the past 12 months in the UK. According to new Ofcom research, 27 percent of UK adults now claim to own one, with 59 percent of sample having bought their phone in the past year (and the volume of data transferred over the UK’s mobile networks increased by 67 percent during 2010).

Published: 08 Aug 2011

There has been a huge growth in smartphone take-up and use in the past 12 months in the UK. According to new Ofcom research, 27 percent of UK adults now claim to own one, with 59 percent of sample having bought their phone in the past year (and the volume of data transferred over the UK’s mobile networks increased by 67 percent during 2010).

The report, Communications Market Report: UK, also looked at the popularity of applications, or ‘apps’, among smartphone users and found that just under half (47 percent) of adult smartphone users have downloaded an app – with many people taking advantage of the availability of free apps. Teenage smartphone owners are more likely to have paid for an app download (38 percent) than adult owners, amongst whom just a quarter (25 percent) had paid for an app.

Apple’s iPhone is the most popular brand of smartphone, with a 32 percent share among adults. This is the brand of choice among ABC1s (37 percent) and is even higher among ABs alone (44 percent). But BlackBerry handsets have also taken a significant share of the market (24 percent) and are particularly popular among younger adults and teens (37 percent each). Female teens, in particular, appear to have a preference for BlackBerry handsets (44 percent). Anecdotal evidence suggests that this preference is driven by the BlackBerry messenger service (BBM) which offers a free alternative to texting (SMS).

Other key findings:

• Smartphone users have a much stronger relationship with their phone than regular mobile users. When asked how addicted they are to their mobiles phones, 37 percent of adult smartphone users admitted high levels of ‘addiction’ to their phone, with this rising to 60 percent of teen smartphone users.

• Smartphone users get more use from their phone than regular mobile phone users. 81 percent of smartphone owners make and receive calls on their mobile everyday compared to 53 percent of regular mobile phone users, while 79 percent claim to send and receive SMS texts every day, compared to 50 percent of regular mobile phone users – this is driven by a higher proportion of smartphone users being on a contract.

• Smartphones are changing social habits and etiquette. Over half (51 percent) of adult smartphone users say they use their phone while socialising and nearly a quarter (23 percent) use their smartphone during a meal with others. Eighty-one per cent say they have their phone on all the time, while 22 percent use it in the bathroom – both significantly higher than among regular phone users.

• Teens (aged 12-15) who have grown up as part of the ‘always connected’ society appear to have different standards of social etiquette to adults with greater willingness to use their phone in a public place (63 percent of teens vs. 44 percent of adults) and less concern about disturbing others (64 percent of teens wouldn’t use their phone if it disrupted others, compared to 81 percent of adults).

Internet on mobile phones

Social networking is the most common Internet use on mobile phones.

As with Internet use on PCs, there is a wide range of types of use of the Internet on mobile phones, although PC users are more likely to use all types of services than mobile phone users. Whereas on PCs the most commonly used Internet services are search engines and email, the most commonly used Internet service accessed on mobile phones is social networking, used by 57 percent of mobile Internet users.

Time on Facebook

Facebook dwarfs other websites in terms of time spent online by mobile users. The data (collected on behalf of the GSMA by ComScore from the UK’s five mobile network operators) finds that UK users spent more than 2.5 billion minutes (42 million hours) on Facebook in December 2010, with each visitor spending an average of 5.6 hours on the site (11 minutes a day).

While Facebook was a clear leader in terms of the amount of time mobile phone users spent on it, Google sites had a bigger reach, with nearly 9.5 million unique mobile phone visitors (compared to Facebook’s 7.5 million visitors). BBC Online had the third largest number of unique visitors, with 3.7 million.