Category Archives: Mobile
Smartphone explosion in Norway: 60% of users watch TV on their phone
This post marks the start of another series here on Socialmedianordic.com: Marketing Monday. Stay tuned for new marketing insights from the Nordics at the beginning of each week!
A recent survey among smartphone users in Norwegian telecom operator NetCom‘s user panel reveals that a staggering 64 % of users now watch TV or movie clips on their phones.
- YouTube is probably the most-used service, but we see an increase in the use of other platforms as well, NetCom product director Lars Ryen Mill says to Mobizmag.com (article in Norwegian).
50% of Norwegian cell phones are smartphones
Norway has one of the world’s highest smartphone penetrations – 90% of phones sold through NetCom retail channels in August were smartphones, according to the article.
This extremely high figure is confirmed by independent analysis agency TNS Gallup. In a breakfast meeting I attended there September 16, they quoted statistics claiming that more than half the phones currently using mobile internet services in the country, are smartphones.
What of offline smartphones?
There is of course one possible flaw in these statistics: The NetCom panel is opt-in, recruited from among the company’s smartphone-using customers. And the TNS Gallup numbers do not take into account mobile phones that are not used to surf the Internet.
Nonetheless, smartphones are emerging as one of the most interesting marketing channels anywhere. The high smartphone penetration in Scandinavia makes the region particularly interesting to follow, and I am confident that great marketing case studies will come out of the Nordic countries before long.
iPhone most popular smartphone in Norway
I am trying to find recent figures from the smartphone markets in other Scandinavian countries as well (let me know if you have an inkling where the best stats are to be found). In the meantime, here are the most popular smartphone manufacturers in the Norwegian market, as quoted in another Mobizmag.com article:
1. Apple (33 %)
2. HTC (19 %)
3. Sony Ericsson (14 %)
4. Samsung (12 %)
5. Nokia (9 %)
6. ZTE (7 %)
7. LG (6 %)
Scandinavians slow in adopting social media for travel
Scandinavians are slowly embracing social media for travel purposes, a recent study by Amadeus reveals. This very interesting report focuses on how the adoption of mobile communictaion will transform the travel industry, and is worth a read.
Asia, UK and Latin-America in front
On a Nordic note, however, I was surprised to learn that we Scandinavians have fallen behind our fellow travellers when it comes to using social media for travel related purposes.
Social media travel statistics. Screen shot from the report "The Always Connected Traveller" by Amadeus 2011.
Sweden and Denmark are two of the countries featured in the whitepaper. Just over half of Swedish and Danish travellers, 53 percent, report using social media for travel. This figure is far behind our British (77%) or Spanish (71%) counterparts. And it hardly even registers compared to the eagerness Chinese, Hong Kong-based or Singaporean travellers demonstrate in their use of social media services for travel (92%, 85% and 81% respectively).
Hints of possibilities to come
In many respects, it’s impressive that more than half of the surveyed Scandinavians use social media for travel. In the egalitarian and affluent North, most of the population travels frequently, be it for work or leisure. It is probable that a greater specter of the population could be counted as seasoned travellers in Scandinavia than in most other parts of the world. Still, there is a long ways to go!
With smartphone adoption on the increase here in Northern Europe, and the Scandinavian travel marked being one of the most online-oriented in Europe, marketers should expect more social media interactions from travellers in the years to come. The Asian numbers only hint at the possibilities in social media marketing for travel.
A hat tip to my Swedish fellow social media enthusiast Hans Kullin who blogged about the Amadeus report first and brought it to my attention. Thanks! (I do promise to not go quoting your blog posts all the time; you just do a splendid job of being interesting!)
