20.1 million Canadians ages 13 and older used mobile devices in September 2011, according to comScore. The number of people owning a smartphones reached 8 million, representing 40% of the mobile market in Canada, a gain of 7 percentage points in the past six months.
RIM ranked as the top platform with 35.8% of the smartphone market, followed by Apple at 30.1%. Google Android gained ground among the competition by doubling its market share to 25.0 over the past six months. Symbian ranked fourth with 4.2% share, followed by Microsoft with 3.2%.
Canadians use their mobile devices to access a wide variety of content. In September, 67.4% of the total Canada mobile audience used text messaging on their mobile device, compared to 88.1% of the Smartphone audience. Downloaded applications were used by 40.9% of the total mobile audience, compared to 84.2% of smartphone subscribers. Mobile browsers were another popular way of accessing mobile content, used by 36.9% of the total audience and 74.8% of the smartphone audience. 39.5% of the total audience and 79.3% of the smartphone audience used their phones to stay up-to-date on the latest news. Other popular mobile behaviours included accessing maps (44.4% of smartphone subscribers), accessing bank accounts (28.8% of smartphone subscribers) and scanning QR codes (18.1% of smartphone subscribers).
Select Mobile Content Usage in Canada, September 2011 (Total Canada Mobile Subscribers and Smartphone Subscribers Ages 13+):
- Sent text message: 67.4% of mobile subscribers / 88.1 of Smartphone subscribers
- Used downloaded application: 40.9% / 84.2%
- Accessed news and information: 39.5% / 79.3%
- Used browser: 36.9% / 74.8%
- Used email (work or personal): 32.7% / 69.3%
- Accessed Social Networking Site or Blog: 29.2% / 60.7%
- Played games: 28.0% / 53.2%
- Accessed weather: 27.5% / 60.2%
- Accessed search: 24.2% / 51.2%
- Listened to music on mobile phone: 20.8% / 40.7%
- Accessed maps: 20.1% / 44.4%
- Accessed sports information: 14.8% / 31.5%
- Accessed entertainment news: 14.2% / 29.5%
- Accessed bank accounts: 13.5% / 28.8%
- Scanned QR/bar code with mobile phone: 8.1% / 18.1%
