Some interesting Philippine mobile phone usage statistics

StatCounter is a website statistics counter the tells a website owner how many visitors the site has had. It also records details of the visitor including what operating and browser system visitors use. 

We were looking at StatCounters statistics on people accessing the web from the Philippines from their mobile phones. What do these statistics tell you? These statistics tell you what operating systems Filipino's are using to access the web on their mobile phones, and hence what kinds of mobile phones people here own. These will not tell you how many of each kind of phone is sold in the Philippines.

To establish a baseline we got the January 2010 statistics.

For the month of January 2010, Filipino accessing the web with their mobile phones did so with the following devices:

Nokia's Symbian OS - 75.9%

Apple's iOS - 11.78%

Sonny Ericsson OS - 6.28%

Samsung OS - 0.93

RIM's BlackBerry OS - 0.29%

Google Android - 0.13%

Our next timelines of measurement is September 2010. These are basically, pre-iPhone 4 era stats. The Apple iPhone was officially released in the Philippines on September 24, 2010.

For September 2010 the statistics are as follows:

Nokia's Symbian OS - 65.31%

Apple's iOS - 10.74%

Sonny Ericsson OS - 7.86%

Samsung OS - 2.49%

Google Android - 1.45%
RIM's BlackBerry OS - 1.00%

After nine months of 2010, Nokia's Symbian OS online usage  had gone down from 75.9% to 65.31%. Surprisingly, Apple's iOS also lost some ground from 11.78% to 10.74%.

The big gainers were Samsung OS which had a more 260% increase in its market share, RIM's BlackBerry OS had increased by almost 400% and Google's Android by more than 1100% (basically x 11).

For December 2010 the statistics are as follows:

Nokia's Symbian OS - 59.87%

Apple's iOS - 15.97%

Sonny Ericsson OS - 5.60%

Google Android - 4.67%

Samsung OS - 4.62%

RIM's BlackBerry OS - 1.40%

This is now a three month timeline. Obviously the iPhone 4 release, helped Apple boost it share by almost 49%. Almost keeping pace with this is RIM's BlackBerry OS which increase its share by 40%. But the biggest gainers in the last quarter of 2010 were Google's Android and Samsung. Samsung continued its climb, this quarter by another 86% which Android usage increased by a bit more than 320%.

Nokia's Symbian OS usage continues to decline and the decline is accelerating. After going down from 75.9% to 65.31% in the first nine months, the last quarter of 2010 saw its usage drop down to 59.87%. Sony Ericsson which saw an increase in its usage for the first nine months of 2010, saw its fortunes reverse in the last quarter of 2010.

Curious at what our neighbors were using I checked out the statistics for Singapore for December 2010... and over there its raining Apple's. 

Over in Singapore, almost two in three (63.06%) persons going online with a mobile phone uses Apple iPhone's. Nokia's Symbian and Google's Android were just over 12% each, and RIM's BlackBerry OS was at just 6%.

But the figures are not so bad for Google's Android and RIM's BlackBerry OS. Looking back at older statistics Apple has been entrenched in its position in Singapore since StatCounter started keeping these statistics in December 2008. Even back than more than half the online users there using iPhones. Since the start of 2010 Android usage in Singapore has gone up by 700%, while BlackBerry OS has gone up by almost 550% during the same period. 

However, Android's and BlackBerry's are not eating into Apple's space. Apple actually gained some ground in 2010. The big looser there was Nokia's Symbian OS which went from 26% to 12.33% during 2010.