UPDATE 27 January 2012:

We’ve had an update on the below including carrier and market-share s0 we thought we’d share the new statistics, as they are very relevant and part of a substantial New Zealand Internet Use study – AUT: World Internet Project December 2011

The Study announces that usage of smartphones and other handheld wireless devices has grown apace, from 7% of Internet users in the 2007 sample, to 18% in 2009 and 27% in 2011.

The question the AUT: World Internet Project December 2011 asked:  ‘Do you use the Internet through wireless hand-held devices, such as a mobile phone or iPad?’
And, if yes, ‘How many hours a week do you use the Internet through wireless hand-held devices?’

More than a quarter (27%) of users access the Internet from a hand-held mobile device such as a smartphone or an iPad.
12% of Internet users, over 10% of the NZ population as a whole, spend 5 hours or more a week online from a wireless hand-held device.
And, the proportion of users accessing the Internet from a handheld mobile device for 10 hours a week or more has increased from almost none in 2007, to 8% of users in 2011.

16% of internet users say they download applications on a smartphone, which we will take to assume that this is number of Android and iPhone handsets in the NZ market, as these are by far the most common to have ‘apps’.

New Zealand Telco Mobile Market Share statistics:

TOTAL NZ MOBILE CONNECTIONS (Source NBR)

Vodafone: 2,434,000*
Telecom:  2,079,000**
2degrees: 875,656***
MVNOs: 50,000****

Our Original Post: Looking for recent smartphone stats for New Zealand and Australia?

You’ve found them! Unofficial’ but… the most accurate we’ve come across this year:

Mitch from The Hyperfactory shared the following New Zealand mobile phone market share statistics at the September 2011 Brainy Breakfast (a Marketing Association event sponsored by Jericho).

Total handsets in the NZ market:

Over 100% penetration of mobile handsets of all types in market in New Zealand

Mobile carrier market share:

The mobile carriers market is roughly split -
45% on Telecom,
45% on Vodafone, and
10% with 2 degrees.

Smartphone penetration:

Of the over 4.5 m phones in market, it’s estimated:
800,000 are smartphones

250,000 are iPhone/iPad
150,000 are Android

Leaving 400,000 or so as Blackberry, Windows and Symbian (Nokia N series etc).  Clearly this will continue to switch as phones are upgraded and new models launch clouding things further – such as Nokia’s new Windows phone.

In summary we are looking at smartphone penetration in NZ in the range of 14-18% and growing.  Compares to smartphone penetration in Europe and USA in the 30-50% range.

In Feb 2011 Telecom shared that smartphone sales were driving growth with ’16%’ quoted – here is the article at PC World.

Meanwhile, in Australia smartphone use is second highest in the world according to this study on behalf of Google.  Read article here on Australian smart phone penetration.

What do you think?  Do these match up with your experience/best guess/hard data?  Note that smartphone use (the Australian data) and smartphone penetration (the NZ data) aren’t the same thing.  We’ll continue to add to this post as we get updated info.

Do you love stats?  The you might also be interested to read these other posts from our blog:

Nearly 2 million Kiwis Use Social Media ( this is fast out of date so a weekly stat update via Catalyst90 is here )

Nearly half of all adult NZers are now shopping online

What % of shopping online is done on NZ websites vs NZer’s shopping on overseas websites?

Feel free to read, and add your comments below.