mobiThinking stumbled across the infographic, pictured right, on the CTIA Website (US wireless association), while updating our
mobile-marketing links page. Before you cut and paste this graph on your Website or PowerPoint presentation, please note that the US doesn’t REALLY lead the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) in wireless broadband subscriptions, as CTIA claims. Nor, for that matter, are Japan, Korea, UK and Germany second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth.
Aside: Please note, the OECD is not the world – 34 countries are members out of approximately 196 worldwide. The country with the highest number of total mobile broadband subscribers, China (with 360 million 3G subscribers, in August 2013), is not a member of the OECD. While China isn’t a significant player when it come to mobile broadband penetration, yet, other non-OECD countries may be.
Closer inspection of the OECD Stats, which date from June 2013, does show that the US has the most subscriptions in total, at 300 million (this is higher than Informa’s estimates). But when the size of the population is taken into account, the US slips to seventh place. And Japan, Korea, UK and Germany move to forth, fifth, 12th and 27th places, respectively. See the graph below for the real picture.
When it comes to mobile broadband penetration, calculated by number of subscribers divided by population, the top countries, according to the OECD are: Australia, 114 percent penetration; Finland, 113 percent; Sweden, 108 percent; Japan, 105 percent; Korea, 103 percent; Denmark, 103 percent. The fact that these six countries have achieved over 100 percent mobile broadband is worth celebrating.
Aside: Please note, 100 percent broadband penetration doesn’t mean that everyone in the country has a mobile broadband connection, as some people will have two or even three mobile-broadband-enabled devices, while other people have none. Knowing the actual number of people in each country with a mobile broadband connection would be much more useful, but far harder to calculate.
According to the OECD stats, the US isn’t far off the 100 percent landmark, in 7th place, with 96 percent mobile broadband penetration, but the UK and Germany, both featured in the CTIA graph, are miles off. The UK is in 12th place with 80 percent and Germany is in 27th place with 43 percent.
This is the beauty of statistics. You can cherry-pick the ones that make you look good and ignore the less flattering ones – in this case also available from the same OECD report. Or you can concentrate on the not-so-pretty stats that highlight how much catching up you have to do.
The UK and Germany, and, to a lesser extent, US, should be asking why their residents are slower at taking up mobile broadband than the top six and what needs to be done about it. The Governments, regulators and associations in those countries need to ask tough questions. Why is mobile penetration in Australia, Finland, Sweden, Japan, Korea and Denmark – is it because they have: a) better mobile broadband coverage; b) higher network reliability; c) faster download speeds; d) better or more affordable data packages; and/or e) more appealing mobile broadband services e.g. a thriving mobile Web?
Aside: Mobile broadband is commonly taken to be 3G or 4G connection. This is not necessary for a device to access the mobile Web, but does make the experience faster and richer. Nor should one assume that all mobile broadband subscribers will be regular mobile Web users, though given that data contracts are usually more expensive than voice and text contracts, it likely that the majority will take advantage. But mobile broadband penetration is certainly an excellent indicator of potential mobile Web users. So, the higher the mobile broadband penetration in a country, the more important it is that companies serving that market embrace the mobile Web.
Looking deeper into the stats shows that the OECD sourced its data for this report from the Governments of the respective countries, however for three, out of 34 countries covered, the Government stats are estimated: US, Switzerland and Israel; while the UK figure is an OECD estimate. This begs two questions:
a) How inaccurate might these figures be?
b) Why don’t the governments of US, UK, Switzerland and Israel know (or want to know) how many of their population have mobile broadband subscriptions?
Also noteworthy from the OECD stats is total mobile broadband subscriptions for OECD member countries – 851.2 million and fixed broadband connections, 332 million. That means mobile now outnumbers fixed broadband connections by a factor of 2.6. As mobiThinking has pointed out before: the mobile Web is massive.
Mobile broadband penetration: the real picture:
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