[March 26, 2015] |
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Smartphone Ownership in Canada Jumps 24 Percent; App Market is Oversaturated, According to New Study from WPP's Catalyst and GroupM Next
The mobile landscape in Canada is rapidly evolving with a 24 percent
increase in smartphone ownership, search marketing agency Catalyst, in
conjunction with GroupM Next, announced today. The new study also found
a decrease in the average number of apps on users' smartphones with
Canadians increasingly preferring the mobile Web over apps to accomplish
most of their activities. At home smartphone usage increased for
virtually all activities while on-the-go use declined.
Battery life and data limits remain the biggest frustrations with
smartphones, likely contributing to the at home versus on-the-go usage
trend. If battery technology improves, and telecommunications companies
increase their data caps, this trend may reverse.
Other key findings in the report include:
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Market penetration - From 2014 to 2015, the share of Canadian
smartphone owners increased from 55 to 68 percent. Growth was
strongest in the 25-34 and 45-54 age ranges.
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Apps decline - Catalyst Canada found the number of apps on
users' smartphones declined from an average of 26 to an average of 19
over the past year. Average monthly app downloads decreased by 53
percent and app uninstalls increased by 29 percent. Despite the
ubiquity of mobile applications, Canadians' app usage is trending down
for most activities, while mobile web usage is trending up. Notable
exceptions to this rule included banking and emailing.
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At-home usage rises; on-the-go declines - At home smartphone
usage increased for 20 out of 21 surveyed activities.On-the-go use
declined for the majority of activities.
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Millennials - The 18-24 age group continues to possess the
greatest number of apps, with a reported average of 8.88 apps used in
a particular month. Millennials are also the heaviest at-home
smartphone users.
"Mobile technology has completely permeated the lives of Canadians,"
said Jeff Lancaster, CEO, Catalyst Canada. "Far from being an occasional
touchpoint for Internet access and communication on the go, smartphones
have become a key part of the fabric of day-to-day life. For brands, one
of the key takeaways is the extreme competitiveness of the app space
with Canadians increasingly limiting their app usage to just a handful
of core apps. While Millennials saw their overall share of the
smartphone user market fall, they remain the heaviest users both of apps
and across the mobile Web."
In creating today's report, Catalyst and GroupM Next surveyed just over
1,100 English and French-speaking smartphone owners in Canada. The
complete study can be found online at: catalyst.ca/2015-mobile.
ABOUT CATALYST
With Canadian offices in Toronto and Montreal, Catalyst (www.catalyst.ca)
is the largest enterprise-focused provider of search marketing services
in Canada, providing paid search marketing, search engine optimization,
social media buying, content marketing and local search optimization.
With additional offices in Boston, New York, Chicago and Seattle, our
clients span B2B and B2C verticals and industries, and include many of
the world's top advertisers.
ABOUT GROUPM
GroupM is the leading global media investment management operation. It
serves as the parent company to WPP media agencies including Maxus, MEC,
MediaCom, and Mindshare. Our primary purpose is to maximize the
performance of WPP's media communications agencies on behalf of our
clients, our stakeholders and our people by operating as a parent and
collaborator in performance-enhancing activities such as trading,
content creation, sports, digital, finance, proprietary tool development
and other business-critical capabilities. The agencies that comprise
GroupM are all global operations in their own right with leading market
positions. The focus of GroupM is the intelligent application of
physical and intellectual scale to benefit trading, innovation, and new
communication services, to bring competitive advantage to our clients
and our companies.
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