14 DAY TRIAL // According to a recently released study from comScore, the adoption of smartphones in the European market has grown 32 percent in the EU5 (the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy) when compared to last year, reaching 51.6 million subscribers. Moreover, the company notes that the adoption of smartphones is the highest in the UK market, which registers a number of 11 million subscribers, and marks an increase of 70 percent when compared to last year.
comScore's study also shows that the growth has been observed across the range of monthly subscription fees, but that the mid to low tier is seeing a higher increase rate than high tier subscriptions, this applying to all EU5 markets. According to the report, while UK leads in smartphone adoption, France is placed second, with a 48 percent growth and 7 million subscribers, while Italy accounts for the largest number of smartphones users, 15 million, although the increase has slowed down to only 11 percent.
“Smartphones are generally seen as luxury devices that come with big price tags and high monthly tariffs, yet the largest segment of the market and the one demonstrating greatest momentum is actually the low to mid tier,” says Alistair Hill, senior mobile analyst at comScore. “The growth in these tiers suggests that as smartphones become more affordable to the majority of European consumers, their proliferation will increase considerably and lead to a surge in mobile content and data consumption. Such market dynamics offer substantial opportunity for different players in the mobile ecosystem - from operators and manufacturers to publishers and advertisers - and underscore the importance of competing for customers now to engender long-term loyalty.”
When it comes to monthly subscription fees, the growth on high tier (over £35 in U.K. and €50 in Euro currency countries) is slower than the one registered in the mid to low tier. According to the research company, the UK market sees that highest rate of adoption both in the mid to low tier (up 76 percent) and high tier (up 60 percent), while France comes in second, with 52 percent and 43 percent, respectively. Additional details on the matter are available on comScore's website.