Hong Kong people love their smartphones, buying them at more than twice the global level, a survey has found.
According to research firm TNS, almost half (48%) of Hong Kong owns a smartphone, compared with a global rate of 23%.
The figure compares with last year’s survey finding of 40% smartphone ownership in Hong Kong.
“Until fairly recently, smartphone or PDA phones were owned by a very specific group of consumers - mainly tech geeks and business ‘road warriors’,” said TNS director technology, Marc de Lange.
“But in the coming year, Hong Kong will reach an important milestone as more than half of all mobile phone owners start to carry a smartphone.”
Smartphone users are increasingly accessing features such as mobile internet (52%), Microsoft Office (28%), pull email (32%) and push email (25%), the survey found.
There is also demand for touchscreens (51%) and qwerty keyboards (11%).
For their next purchase, “look and feel” is the predominant deciding factor for 32% of Hong Kong consumers purchasing a mobile device, followed equally by brand and content and apps choice (19%).
Because of the wide range of mobile services available, when choosing a mobile phone consumers are increasingly focused on which content and applications they will be able to access, says de Lange.
In Hong Kong, 30% of mobile users regularly check and update their social networks compared to 12% globally, says TNS.
Another 24% do blogging on their phones, a big jump from 6% in 2009.
Facebook is the app most commonly-used by Hong Kong consumers at 17%, followed by Yahoo (14%) and Google (14%).