Australians proving yet again that they love their gadgets

Compared to Europe through the early 2000s, our lack of Internet capable mobile networks and dearth of handsets was almost laughable. Almost as a result of this, however, Australia has become one of the most ripe markets for smart phone exploitation because the disruption caused by iOS and Android has had a much more fertile ground to grow.

Once the networks got sorted, we moved to having one of the highest penetrations of mobile Internet capability of any nation - sitting at just shy of 70% according to Morgan Stanley. In a very short space of time we've also embraced smart phones with a seemingly limitless interest.

According to IDC research - of all new mobile phones sold in 2009, 36.4% were smart phones. Now, with the data from 2010 we've seen a huge shift upwards to 57% of all new handsets sold being smart phones. Clearly the combination of a multi-purpose, Internet enabled and fashionable communications device has ignited a passion for this type of technology in Australian consumers. If this growth rate continues through 2011 then we could see almost 90% of all new handsets sold being smart phones, leaving the old feature phone as being something only tourists use on their 6 week backpacking holiday or tweens have as their "emergency" call home device.

Another interesting data point in the IDC numbers was the volume of devices sold; 12.74 million handsets in 2010 and 10.99 million in 2009. Given the most common contract period in Australia is 24 months (and it's almost impossible to find one shorter with most retailers) there are either a lot of people jumping their contracts early to get the latest tech or people buying handsets outright. Irrespective, it's safe to assume we have just over 10 million smart phones in the wild in Australia and given the current churn rate we can expect to see that increase again this year significantly.

We've been seeing the trend towards having dual leaders in this market in the shape of Android and iPhone in this space for quite a while and it's great to see some hard numbers backing this up. With it looking like these two platforms will account for 70% of the total market by end of 2011 in Australia, if you're not considering both in your mobile strategy you're clearly going to miss large groups of users.

The one random dot to watch for the next 18 months is Windows Mobile. Symbian is tracking now like it's fallen off a cliff, as to be expected, and most retailers and consumers will be looking elsewhere when looking to renew this year. Next year, when Nokia have a very shiny, capable new OS to go on their very capable hardware we'll see whether the consumers warm to it and whether Elop's strategy has paid off (and let's face it, Nokia devices, though not as glamorous as an iPhone consistently have better hardware including better sound and much better cameras).

All of this is greatly exciting to a techie like me. Australians love technology and we've languished in the mobile space with expensive contracts and handsets but now we're over that point we look to quickly be moving towards a landscape similar to that of Japan or South Korea. In a few more years we might even have some  Europeans coming over on holidays thinking "Wow they are way more advanced in this than we are" which would be a nice change of position.