A decade since the Nokia N95 and the original iPhone launched in 2007, Australia’s love affair with the smartphone has only gotten more hardcore. In 2017, fewer than one in 10 Australians doesn’t have a smartphone, half of all 25-34 year olds use some kind of mobile wallet, and the standalone GPS is all but dead with 81 per cent of owners using their phones for directions.
These results come from Telstra’s eighth annual Smartphone Index, which the country’s largest telco has launched ahead of Friday’s much-anticipated launch of the iPhone X. It’s full of interesting numbers, but it paints a clear picture of a country that couldn’t tear itself away from a phone screen if it tried. We especially love streaming video, as it turns out, and it’s taking off fast — 40 per cent of Telstra traffic comes from video versus 30 per cent two years ago, and that figure is projected to reach 75 per cent by 2022.
31 per cent of all the 2000-plus smartphone users surveyed by Telstra and Nielsen use tap and pay on their phones, and unsurprisingly millenials lead that category with 47 per cent using some kind of NFC banking app or Apple Pay. Similarly, 62 per cent of Aussies check in on some kind of social media on their phones, but 85 per cent of young Aussies aged 16-24.
Telstra’s quick to claim its own plaudits, too — its networks are, in its limited gigabit 4G rollout areas, 100 times faster than the original 3G network connection speeds. 98 per cent of all Telstra’s mobile network activity is driven by data in 2017 versus 99 per cent voice in 2008, and data usage has jumped 180 times since 2008 from 2.3 petabytes to 420 petabyes this year. [Telstra]