Smartphone is Asia's Internet Gateway

In much of Asia, as in some other regions, the smartphone is the gateway to use of the Internet. In India, for example, about 57 percent of the time, the smartphone is the access device of choice.

Even in China, where access using smartphones and PCs or tablets is fairly closely divided, about 45 percent of the time the smartphone is the device of choice, where about 39 percent of the time people use a smartphone or a PC or tablet about the same amount.

In the Philippines, about 39 percent of the time, the smartphone is the preferred or more-used access device. In about 22 percent of instances, smartphones are used about as much as PCs and tablets. In about 21 percent of instances, PCs or tablets are the more-used access device.

But there are markets, such as Japan where PCs or tablets are used 53 percent of the time to gain access to the Internet.

That greater use of PCs and tablets would seem to be a developed market phenomenon. In Australia, a PC or tablet is the most-used Internet access device about 36 percent of the time. In 26 percent of the instances, the smartphone is the more-likely access device.  

But there are divergences, even among developed markets. South Korea, one might presume, would have usage profiles similar to Japan. Not so. In Korea, where Google finds that 60 percent of the time, the mobile phone is the most frequently used Internet access device.

Also, in South Korea use of smartphones is nonlinear, by age cohort. Use of smartphones does not decline, in linear fashion, by age cohort, and is high in every age cohort but the 55 and older group, which still registers, at 47 percent usage, a high rate.

In Indonesia, as elsewhere, there is a direct and linear correlation between smartphone use and age. Some 70 percent of Indonesians under the age of 25 use a smartphone. In the age cohort 25 to 34, about 46 percent of Indonesians use smartphones.

In the 35 to 44 age cohort, some 38 percent of Indonesians use smartphones. Indonesians 45 to 54 use smartphones at a 27 percent rate. In the 55 or older group, just 13 percent use smartphones.