Getting to Know the Mobile Population

eMarketer

Sophisticated—and diverse

Mobile users are inseparable from their devices. Whether they have a smartphone or a traditional feature phone, it goes with them at all times. And as these devices become more capable, they are evolving into extensions of users’ desktops and home communications and entertainment systems.

Penetration will near 100% by 2013, reflected in a modest 2.7% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in the number of subscribers between 2008 and 2013.

Mobile Internet usage has been steadily rising, with some of the traditional barriers—namely cost, complexity and user experience—beginning to fall away. eMarketer predicts that growth will persist over the next five years, albeit at a slower pace. In the US, the number of mobile users accessing the Internet will jump from 73.7 million in 2009 to 134.3 million in 2013, a CAGR of 17.7%.

The mobile Internet user population in the US is now roughly one-third the size of the wired Internet audience, a gap that will narrow by the early part of the next decade. Smartphones constitute the bridge between the desktop and mobile Web.

Further, despite the spotlight on smartphones, they remain a minority share of the mobile device market. Smartphone users are a far more attractive group, both for the audience demographics and usage patterns, but marketers that ignore the other 80% to 85% of the user population do so to their detriment.

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