We love surveys and studies, especially when it comes to Android OS versus iOS and Samsung versus Apple. A recent survey done by Catalyst and GroupM and another from comScore, helped paint an interesting picture of the mobile landscape in Canada. Mobile usage is on the rise – Canada estimates that they have over 28 million wireless subscribers, but comScore puts the number at the end of 2014 at 24,318,000, which showed a growth of 5-percent over the year before.
According to the report below, 81-percent of the wireless subscribers in Canada own a smartphone and 18.8-percent own a full-featured phone. Rogers claims that 84-percent of its subscribers own a smartphone, Bell has 76-percent of its subscribers using a smartphone and TELUS is showing 81-percent. Carriers want their subscribers using a smartphone because of the high profit data usage. Of that overall 81-percent of smartphone owners, Apple is coming in at 38.3-percent and Samsung is weighing in at 32.4-percent. BlackBerry still holds 8.9-percent – down 6.1-percent from a year ago, HTC owns 3.7-percent, LG has 2.7-percent and Nokia holds 2.3-percent.
When it comes to operating systems, Google’s Android rules the Canadian landscape with 50.5-percent of the market share and this up from 44-percent just a year ago. Apple iOS increased 1.3-percent from the year before and comes in at 38.3-percent – of course the same percent as their phone percentage. All other OSs – BlackBerry 10 and Windows Phone – control 11.2-percent of the market.
A few other interesting facts are that Canadians are watching more videos more often on their smartphones and tablets. Tablet usage has grown 56-percent since June 2013 and Canadians are now using 9.3 million tablets. Another interesting trend they found is that Canadians like to use the smartphone (32.2-percent) and their tablets (35-percent) while watching TV.
A smartphone now reaches 4 out of every 5 Canadians and there has been a 19-percent increase in smartphone users that access their device every day and a 15-percent increase in those that use their device every week. It is a 50-50 split on men versus women using smartphones, while the other 50-percent of each gender use a feature phone. Smartphones are used by 7-percent of the 13-17 year olds, and that jumps to 36-percent in the 18-34 year olds, 37-percent of the 35-54 year olds, and 21-percent of the 55 and older Canadians use smartphones, while 59-percent still use a feature phone.