Adobe released a new report at Mobile World Congress that features new insights into phablets, traffic trends and mobile usage overseas.
Key insights include:
Mobile growth in China tops other countries; over 50% YoY: This is looking at the growth in share of online visits; 64% if you consider just smartphones (3% decline with tablets). The U.S. saw 12% growth; 32% in India.
Mobile share in Saudi Arabia is massive: mobile accounts for 61.9% share of online visits and furthers the “mobile-first” trend in the region (only country surpassing 50%, looking at mobile share)
- The next top 4: Ireland (49%), Philippines (47%), Japan (47%), UK (43%)
- Others countries: US (37%), Spain (37%), India (34%) and China (34%)
Mobile growth in EMEA trails APAC and Americas: 14 of the 17 EMEA countries analyzed show total mobile visits growing by 30% or more YoY (looking at share of visits); all 17 showed growth of at least 22%. Viewed globally however, all 9 countries analyzed in APAC and the Americas showed growth of over 28%.
Smartphones continue to displace tablets: tablet traffic declining overall, with some regions seeing big declines: India (34%), Brazil (29%), Saudi Arabia (25%), Australia (16%), Spain (15%). Other countries: US (9%) and China (3%).
- Only a small number of countries saw tablet growth (only 2 in the double digits): Slovakia (25%), Czech Republic (12%), New Zealand (3%), Japan (3%), Switzerland (2%) and Finland (1%).
- Phablets gaining in prominence; Adobe’s take: “There was a time when tablet browsing surpassed smartphone browsing, and that trajectory was expected to continue,” said Tamara Gaffney, principal at ADI. “Since then, however, browsing growth by these devices has decreased significantly, and we think this is mainly because smartphone screens are getting bigger. Now, instead of buying both a smartphone and a tablet, people are opting for ‘phablets’ and relying on just this one device—with a larger screen—for all of their browsing.”
This data follows Adobe’s announcements earlier this week at MWC, including the launch of Adobe Experience Manager Mobile to simplify the process of building and managing visually appealing enterprise applications, new capabilities in location-based personalization and messaging and a completely new deep linking solution that delivers better engagement for consumers and seamlessly integrates into marketers’ existing campaigns.