Telstra celebrates ten years of smartphones in Australia
A decade after smartphones were launched in Australia, Telstra has released research looking at the country’s use of the devices.
Smartphones and Australians: a 10-year connection
Ten years since the first consumer smartphone launched in Australia, new research from Telstra reveals the nation’s decade-long love affair with internet-powered phones has reached new heights with 91 per cent of mobile users now owning one.
The eighth annual Telstra Smartphone Index launched ahead of the year’s most anticipated phone launch confirms the supremacy of the smartphone as our most indispensable tech companion, finding:
- Smartphones are beginning to edge out cash – with almost a third of active Aussie
smartphone users (31 per cent) now using their phones to pay for goods and services in
store. Millennials (25-34) are leading the charge with 47 per cent of active smartphone
users using their smartphones to ‘tap and pay’. - Smartphones are our ticket to love – more than a quarter (26 per cent) of millennials
use their phone or tablet at least weekly to access dating apps like Tinder, RSVP and
eHarmony. - We’re snapchatting, instagramming and facebooking like never before — with 62 per
-+cent who access the web on their smartphone or tablet at least weekly, logging onto
social networks every day on their device. And this climbs to 85 per cent for young
Aussies (aged 16-24). - They’re our go-to point and shoot – 96 per cent of active smartphone users are using
their devices to take photos, with 58 per cent of those who access social media capturing
and posting selfies and 44 per cent snapping-and-sharing photos of their meals.
We’d be lost without them – 81 per cent of owners use smartphones to navigate.
“Since 2007 when Telstra launched Australia’s first consumer smartphone — the Nokia N95 – these devices have become central to almost every digital task we carry out, every social connection we make and every piece of entertainment we consume,” said Kevin Teoh, Telstra’s Head of Mobile Products.
“A year later Apple launched iPhone 3G and with its touch screen, app store and gesture control defined what Australians expect from their mobile. It helped to create countless cultural trends – from the selfie to the streaming phenomenon.
“Flash forward to 2017 and Telstra’s research shows smartphone connectivity has become ubiquitous across most of the population and around the clock with almost 8 in ten smartphone users accessing the internet on a daily basis via their smartphone – up from 53 per cent in 2010,” Mr Teoh said.
49 per cent of Australian smartphone owners turn to their social media feeds, email inbox and the internet generally for the latest updates first thing in the morning, while the evening is all about entertainment, with 39 per cent3 of owners streaming TV and movies via their smartphones.
“Over the decade we’ve evolved our network to unlock even greater smartphone capabilities
increasing data download speeds 100-fold and rolling out 4G coverage to 99 per cent of the
population enabling everything from video streaming and virtual assistants to the Pokemon Go craze in the process,” Mr Teoh added.
“It’s exciting to think about what the next ten years might hold. As smartphones evolve and we move into the 5G era there will be a new raft of sophisticated features that make them even more indispensable. High quality augmented reality, virtual personal assistants that anticipate your needs and virtual doctors that monitor vital signs are just some of the technologies that are on the horizon.”
A defining decade of smartphones
- From voice to data – National data usage on the Telstra network has leapt 180 times
since 2008 (from just 2.3 petabytes to a massive 420 petabytes in 2017). Then voice calls
accounted for 99 per cent of all mobile usage. Today 98 per cent of mobile activity is data. - On-demand entertainment – The rise in mobile entertainment is one of the main drivers behind the rapid increase in mobile data and today video streaming accounts for 40 per cent of mobile network activity – up from 30 per cent just two years ago. Telstra predicts that video will account for 75 percent of all mobile network usage by 2022.
Network evolution – To accommodate the transition to increasingly data-driven activities, Telstra has introduced network speeds that are up to 100 times faster than they were 10 years ago, shifting gear from 3G to Gigabit LTE. - Stream screen – The evolution of smartphone screen sizes and resolution is spurring
video consumption on the go. Telstra’s research shows active smartphone users who
consume sports content on their smartphones with larger screen sizes are more likely to
stream live sporting events than those with smaller screen sizes. Active smartphone users
with bigger screens are also more likely to stream video content – no matter the length of
the content. - Investment in infrastructure – To meet rising data demands across the country, Telstra has made unmatched investments in both metro and regional areas over the past decade – including deploying 3,500 new mobile sites in regional areas and introducing 1 million Telstra Air Wi-Fi hotspots so customers don’t need to tap into their mobile data.
About the Research: This research was conducted online by Nielsen on behalf of Telstra in July2017. The sample for the study (n=2,024) is nationally representative of mobile owners in Australia aged 16+ according to population figures sourced from Nielsen’s Consumer & Media View national database. The research is complemented by Telstra mobile network data. Active smartphone users are defined as those who connect to the internet on their smartphone weekly or more often (n=1,648).
From a Telstra media release
