'Smartphones: 30 percent of time spent on communication'

A new global report released by Ericsson on Thursday claims that 30 percent of time spent by users on all smartphone apps is on communication.

As per the report, though smartphones have a wide range of functions such as entertainment, games and photography, communication continues to be the dominant activity with users spending time on communicating through voice, instant messaging, voice over internet protocol (such as Skype), emails and social networking.

"We found that 40-50 percent of data consumption for communication apps uses mobile broadband, whereas the corresponding figure for video is just 20 percent," says Swetleena Swain, senior advisor at Ericsson ConsumerLab.

The report also claims that culture and language influence communication patterns and the adoption of communication apps.

Smartphone users in Britain and the US make more voice calls while the Japanese and South Koreans prefer to text message and use locally-developed communication apps.

"Typically, the US apps are designed for an English-speaking audience, so it's not surprising that these are predominant in English-speaking countries," says Swain.

According to the report, Indian users spend aroung 47 percent of their smartphone-usage time in communication including voice calls with utility and productivity tools claiming 14 percent of the time. Entertainment and gaming follows close behind with 11 percent and 10 percent respectively.

While voice calls account for 21 percent of the total time spent on communication, voice call over Internal and instant messaging (IM) accounts for 66 percent of the total time. Social networking comes in third with 11 percent followed by Email which accounts for just 2 percent.

WhatsApp Messenger was the most used of all IM apps followed by HIke, Facebook Messenger, Google Hangouts and WeChat.

The report titles Ericsson ConsumerLab was released after conducting a global consumer research programme based on interviews with 1,00,000 individuals, in more than 40 countries and 15 megacities.