Mobile Internet in Russia and the world: platforms, consumption, trends

We offer you a brief summary of the three reports presented at a press conference organized by Mail.Ru Group together with Nielsen.

Speech by Matthew Hester, Director of Consumer Research at Nielsen Telecom Group in Europe

Today I would like to present you the results of our research on the use of mobile Internet and the development of smartphones in general.
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In recent years, we have experienced two peculiar revolutions: first, the mass distribution of mobile devices, and soon a large increase in mobile Internet bandwidth and gadget performance. As a result, mobile technologies have drastically changed our ways of communicating and consuming information. A typical illustration of these changes is a comparison of the modern concert and the concert of, say, the 90s.

Previously, concerts came to listen to live music and chat with each other, today people try to record a performance and share it with others on the network.

Today, active users of mobile technologies are characterized by the following features:

• Distracted attention . In the US, about 80% of consumers use the tablet while watching TV.
• Life in social networks . In the UK, 35% of smartphone owners have logged into Facebook in the past 30 days.
• Efficiency of use . In the US, about 25% of smartphone owners scan barcodes to save time.
• Disunity . Modern consumers often own multiple devices. We receive information from various sources, for example, 20% of Youtube views are carried out via a smartphone.
• Using SMART technology . About 20% of smartphone owners in China use mobile wallets and other similar services at least once a month.
• Using geolocation . In Germany, about 33% of smartphone owners use geolocation services at least once a month.

I also want to illustrate some more characteristic trends on the example of owners of Android-smartphones from the UK:

• On average, the smartphone is used for 83.5 minutes per day (of which about 24.3 minutes is spent on social networking).
• Phone calls take less than 7 minutes a day. SMS + calls are only 14% of the total time.
• 73% of the time it takes to work with different applications, 11% - using the browser.

Social networking, the development of various mobile services and the growth of smartphone capabilities require an increasing increase in mobile traffic:




The current dynamics and forecast of growth in traffic in the coming years require significant investments from mobile operators in infrastructure development and capacity expansion. An important clarification - the lion's share of mobile traffic passes through Wi-Fi. Another illustration of the example of users from the UK (Android-smartphones):



As you can see, the peak of using 3G traffic comes in the evening when people return from work. However, the peak of Wi-Fi traffic falls at midnight, when the British get to their home routers.

Despite the triumphant march of smartphones around the world, their distribution across countries varies greatly.



The total population of the three selected countries, in which the share of smartphones is still small, is 2 billion people, so the potential volume of the market is very large.

With the increasing availability of smartphones, many users can afford to have multiple mobile devices. What do these people use them for? You can answer this question on the example of Italy. The penetration of laptops remains significant, but its growth has slowed down, while the penetration of smartphones doubled, and the penetration of tablets - in three.



Despite the fact that laptops in general are still the dominant class of mobile devices in Italy, however, already 25% of tablet owners use their device for online shopping (compared to 8% for laptops).

In general, the distribution of user preferences greatly complicates the process of marketing. Previously, the buyer’s decision to purchase equipment looked like this:



The potential buyer could be influenced through three channels: print media, through TV and radio. It was also possible to stimulate impulsive demand with stock in stores. Today, the process is much more complicated:



Now the consumer is affected by a huge number of media channels. Of great importance in the decision-making process are social networks, in which we can find reviews about products and learn more about their characteristics. Already having come to the store, a potential buyer can get new information or reviews using a mobile phone, which can also be a decisive moment in making the final decision. For example, in Germany, 24% of smartphone users scan bar codes at a store, and in the UK, 18% compare online prices.

Since consumers are increasingly using smartphones to obtain additional information, this can be used to attract customers, that is, as an additional marketing channel. In the US, of the total time users spend on various media, 12% are on phones, while mobile advertising accounts for only a small percentage of the total advertising budget. Television accounts for 42% of the time, for the Internet - 26%. Thus, the mobile advertising market has great growth potential. For this, mobile operators must form and maintain a loyal customer base.

In many European countries, when buying a new phone, many users also change their mobile operator. One of the reasons for this phenomenon is the saturation of the market and picky users when choosing tariffs.



To retain customers, operators need to adapt to changing demand and redistribute their efforts to growing areas.

These were all the main trends that I wanted to talk about today. I see the development of access to gadgets through automotive interfaces, the expansion of geolocation services, the widespread introduction of smart home technologies, and the expansion of the range of gadgets using mobile technologies as new directions for the development of mobile technologies.

Speech by Alexander Gorny, Director of Information Technologies, Mail.Ru Group

I would like to devote my speeches to the mobile Internet in Russia. In the first part I will talk about ordinary users, and in the second part I will present the point of view of web specialists on the mobile Internet.

Part 1

We build our vision of mobile Internet users based on data from the Mail.Ru Rating service. This is a statistics collection system that collects information about the behavior of visitors to the resource. Mail.Ru rating is more than 850 thousand counters on sites (more than 1% of all services in the world), more than 80 million visitors per day and more than 2 billion views per day.





Today, almost 30% of the visitors of the RuNet are mobile users. Let's see how the “traditional” (stationary) users and mobiles differ between themselves.





Mobile users are generally younger, because the older generation is more difficult to master gadgets and adapt to change. However, this suggests that in the future the proportion of older people will grow at the expense of today's young people accustomed to mobile devices. In addition, older people, though slower, but still master new technologies. So a striking age differentiation is no longer observed.

During the day, the activity of mobile and stationary users differs:



Despite the possibility of using service computers during the working day, the activity of mobile users is also great. That is, people are actively accessing the Internet from phones and tablets, also at work, and during lessons and lectures. In the evening and at night, the ratio changes in favor of mobile devices, but the gap is also small.

So far, mobile users spend significantly less time in the mobile web. This is due to the cost of traffic, cellular coverage, device operation time and other reasons. But this distinction is gradually smoothed out.



Changes in the activity of both user segments depending on the day of the week are also observed, but these fluctuations are insignificant.



Below is the division of users depending on the region of Russia.



In those regions where the wired infrastructure is worst developed, the share of mobile users is higher than the national average. The smallest number of mobile users is observed in regions with a moderate income of the population and a well-developed wired infrastructure.

What are people mainly doing on the mobile Internet? Of course, the highest activity comes from working with various applications. If we talk about the most visited sites, then the first place is occupied by social networks, mail, news resources and online publications.



Android is the most popular mobile platform in Russia. Good news for webmasters: the proportion of old devices has decreased significantly. The most popular screen resolution was the resolution of the iPad.



So let's summarize. The portrait of a modern typical mobile Internet user in Russia is as follows: this is a young man, spending more time on the Internet in the evening and on weekends. Uses a device on Android, but with a screen resolution typical of the iPad.

Part 2

We conducted a survey among ordinary webmasters, users of the Mail.Ru Rating service. These are not elite specialists, but representatives of the most mass segment, the “salt of the earth”, so to speak. The purpose of the survey was to find out the opinion of webmasters on the Russian mobile Internet. It turned out that most sites do not have a mobile version. Moreover, many do not plan to create it.



It turns out not too pleasant gap: about 30% of users already use mobile devices to access the Internet, but 28% of webmasters do not care at all. There are objective reasons for this. One of them is the absence of mobile traffic on a specific site, as a result, the webmaster has no incentive to create a mobile version. However, this approach has a downside: mobile traffic may be absent just due to the lack of a mobile version of the site, that is, visitors simply go to more friendly resources.



I want to emphasize once again an important point: mobile traffic already has a large volume. Therefore, it is advisable to attend to the creation of adapted versions of the sites so as not to lose a significant share of the audience in the near future. The most popular resources of mobile users today are:



There are no online stores in this list yet, but this is a matter of time.

Among those sites that have already acquired a mobile version, there are peculiar leaders who have even worse functionality of the regular version.



Returning to the question that many webmasters do not care about the lack of a mobile version of the site: how do they see the behavior of mobile users on their unadapted resources?



I think the real picture will be somewhat different: the first and last behaviors will occur much more often.

Today, the mobile Internet in Russia is experiencing a certain turning point: on the one hand, the traffic is already very high, but on the other - many web specialists still underestimate mobile users. Of course, in the end they will inevitably come to the need to adapt their resources, and this will be another driver for the growth of the mobile Internet.

Presentation by Ekaterina Petrova, Head of Nielsen Telecom Practice in North-Eastern Europe

I would like to tell you about the research we conducted together with OMI (Online Market Intelligence). We surveyed 500 smartphone users who purchased their devices during the last year. We were interested in how Russians use smartphones. And that's what we managed to find out.

On average, our respondents own 4 more devices, and are going to buy 2 more. These could be laptops, desktop computers, mp3 players, communicators, game consoles.



On the one hand, this is good news for electronics manufacturers. However, modern smartphones are already able to replace the vast majority of these devices. Therefore, for our part, we would recommend smartphone manufacturers to pay more attention to user training and focus on the versatility of their products.

So, why do smartphone users use their devices? It turned out that 90% of the respondents send sms at least once a week. And women do it much more often than men. Thus, sending sms for today is the most popular type of smartphone use.

Next in popularity are e-mail and various instant messengers. Men are already leading here, 18% of women do not use mail through smartphones at all, and 28% do not use instant messengers.



Smartphone users spend not so much time on surfing the web, although 91% of those polled go to the Internet at least once a week via a browser. On average, the frequency of use of the browser - once a day.



Matthew Hester has already mentioned that Wi-Fi dominates as a means of delivering mobile Internet, and our research confirms this. However, the mobile Internet has great potential. Operators need to develop the availability of mobile Internet and its speed. After home use, the most popular places for using the mobile Internet are public and personal transport, as well as public places such as cafes, restaurants, shopping centers. This is useful information for mobile operators who can use it to promote tariff plans that could attract users to use mobile traffic instead of Wi-Fi.



On the main desktop of a smartphone, there are on average about 18 applications: games, entertainment, social networks, geolocation services, weather and a number of others. In a month, smartphone users download an average of 4 new applications, which is quite a lot.

The number of downloaded applications is distributed as follows: approximately 30% of applications are entertainment and functional, 11% are social networks. However, it is also important to pay attention to the frequency, and here the importance of social networks increases.



Despite the much smaller number of downloaded applications for social networks, the duration and frequency of their use is significantly higher. On average, smartphone owners run social networking apps twice a day, and in the 16-24 age group, about 60% of users use social networks 3 or more times a day. As you can see, this is a very powerful channel of influence for business and the formation of opinions by various stakeholders. For example, the majority of our respondents indicated that they would make decisions on the purchase of high-tech goods, on leisure activities and vacations based on opinions posted on social networks. Also, 47% of respondents noted that they began to use less voice communication.



On average, smartphone owners rated satisfaction with their devices at 8 points out of 10. Among those who bought a smartphone in the last three months, this rating was even higher - 9 points. The four most attractive features of smartphones were design, a large selection of applications, ease of sending messages and navigation.



However, despite such a high degree of satisfaction with their devices, 29% of respondents expressed a willingness to purchase a new smartphone within the next three months. And among men, this figure was 33%. The most important sources of information when choosing a new smartphone were reviews and reviews on the Internet, manufacturers' websites, information in online stores and reviews of relatives and friends.



An example of how a modern consumer searches on the Internet for choosing a smartphone was provided by our partner OMI:



This is a married man of 34 years old, in each brand he chooses among several models of smartphones. For information gathering and analysis, he actively uses several specialized resources and compares prices and assortment in several online stores.

Another important result of our research was the information that smartphone users did not watch TV less, however, while watching TV, they simultaneously use their other devices. According to the results of our other study, in general, the level of trust in television is about 42%, so this information channel should also not be forgotten, especially in attracting potential buyers who do not yet have smartphones.

In conclusion, I would like to make a small comparison of smartphone users who have decided to buy a new device, and those who still doubt. Those who decided to buy a new smartphone are the most advanced audience in terms of the number of applications used, activity in using the Internet, social networks and various gadgets. Thus, to attract this audience, it is necessary to increase the availability and usability of social networks and other network entertainment.

Those who have not yet decided to change their smartphone, less actively use their devices, often limited to only the most simple functions. These people are more likely to use Wi-Fi, rather than 3G, and most of them only download free apps. Therefore, to attract this group of consumers, it is necessary to focus on fashion, style, relevance, popularity, free of charge of some programs, ease of use.



Summing up the brief summary of our press conference, the following trends can be noted: the mobile Internet, both in the world and in Russia, is not only growing rapidly, but already accounts for a significant share of the total traffic. And in the coming years, although the growth rate will decrease, it will remain at a significant level. In most countries, a multiple growth of the mobile advertising market is expected, and in a number of states, sales of mobile devices, in particular, smartphones, will also increase. To date, the mobile audience does not have any pronounced gender component. Also recently, the age structure of mobile Internet consumers has significantly smoothed out due to the involvement of a large number of elderly people. The most popular tasks in the mobile Internet are communication in social networks and all kinds of entertainment resources.