Cellphones lags popularity in CanadaGlobal Study on Telecommunications suggests, when it comes to owning and using mobile phones, Canada lags behind many nations, including several in the developing world.
Conducted by international market research firm TNS, the Global Telecoms Insight study found that only two-thirds of the Canadian population between the ages of 16 and 60 use a mobile phone on a regular basis. This level of penetration puts Canada significantly below the global average of 80 per cent among the 30 countries surveyed, and even further behind the 90 per cent and 97 per cent levels found in the U.S. and UK, respectively.
Among the one-third of Canadians who do not own mobile phones, the majority has no intention of purchasing a cellphone within the next 12 months, a group of consumers the study refers to as rejecters. Interestingly, only Mexico and Vietnam have greater proportions of people in the rejecter segment, two countries that are not traditionally considered as technologically advanced. By contrast, many South East Asian markets, such as South Korea and Hong Kong, have very few people falling under the rejecter category.
Canadians who own mobile phones are in no rush to replace them with newer and better models. They, along with the Dutch, expect to keep their handset for 3.5 years on average - longer than in any other market studied - and one year longer than mobile phone users in the USA, UK and Australia.
