What global mobile use means for your business

July 03, 2013 by John McGarvey

Next time you're on a train, stop and look around. Ten years ago, most people sitting nearby would have been reading books and newspapers.

But today, the most popular way to pass the time on public transport is to use a smart phone. Checking emails, reading tweets, playing games, checking the news ... we take smart phones for granted because they're so common these days.

But actually, those little glowing screens represent a big shift in how we use technology and consume information.

As we've said before, it's a trend you should take note of when you're creating a website or planning a new business. And now Lebara - which provides worldwide mobile phone access - has created this infographic to illustrate how the smart phone trend is playing out in different parts of the world.

It reveals that the world has gone mobile in a way nobody could have imagined just ten years ago. And some of the figures are surprising:

Mobile use has grown everywhere, but in some places it's grown enormously. In Russia, growth was 3,205%. In India and Pakistan, growth was over 13,000%.
The way people use mobiles varies considerably. For instance, 86% of people in the UK use SMS, compared to 58% of people in Germany.
In most countries under 50% of people use their phones for social networking. So you can't assume that everyone with a phone is using it for Twitter and Facebook.

If you're planning to launch a mobile product or service, this overview highlights how important it is to do your research and understand how people in your target market actually use their mobile phones.

Here's the infographic - if it's hard to read then just click it to view the full-size version:

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What global mobile use means for your business