Mobile internet via affordable feature phones on the rise: Yahoo

This figure shows that this category is playing a significant role in driving this growth, with Nokia holding the lead position in the region, against its smartphone competitors such as Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola.

The study was conducted in conjunction with Nielsen in the Philippines, Synovate in Malaysia, Kantar Media in Vietnam and TNS in Indonesia.

It showed that the youth segment, aged from 10 to 29, is using affordable handsets bundled with bite-size voice and data plans, for emailing, social networking, Instant Messaging and search, with the majority of them on prepaid plans, spending between US$12.5 to US$20 per month.

Meanwhile, home is interestingly the most common mobile Internet access point, compared to outdoor locations, for content such as facts, trivia, images, news and graphics.

Malaysia distinguishes itself from other regional markets, having a higher proportion of users on postpaid plans and accessing mobile internet out-of-home. It should be seen as a country where marketers can leverage the latter end of the purchase funnel and target consumers on the move.

David Jeffs, head of insights for Yahoo! Southeast Asia, noted that the phenomenal growth of mobile Internet in Southeast Asia offers a range of opportunities to brand marketers to tap into the entire journey of a consumer’s purchase path.

“Marketers must start adopting mobile as a platform for building their brand’s awareness, consideration and ultimately purchase intent. Whilst mobile marketing is currently in its infancy, we will this to become a popular channel to complement other mass media platforms.”

Indonesia and Vietnam have seen significant growths in individuals accessing the internet via their mobile, growing to 58per cent and 30per cent this year respectively, from 22 per cent and 19 per cent.

In the case of Indonesia, the increase is due to availability and access to low-cost affordable devices with ‘smartphone’ functionalities and a low monthly mobile Internet spend at an average of US$12.5.

In Vietnam, growth has been witnessed in the second tier cities of Da Nang (46 per cent) and Can Tho (61 per cent), where users are leapfrogging from fixed-line Internet access to the mobile Web. 

The Philippines, where mobile Internet is still in its infancy, has more female mobile internet users, at 57 per cent. Nevertheless, with 90 million mobile phone subscriptions in the country, it has a high penetration of Internet-capable low-cost feature phones and users are increasingly dependent on these as an access device for the web.