Smartphone global penetration hits 17%

Just found some new data from Nielsen about smartphones. Cunning timing as I was hunting for it earlier in the week and finding numbers was proving tricky.

With most of us on 18-24 month contract renewal cycles these days there's a steady stream of people upgrading their handsets all the time.(Although I am increasingly thinking the future is in SIM only 30 day notice deals and buy the handset you want yourself as deals like that don't work with the pace of technological change if you want more from your device than just phone calls and texts).

72% increase in smartphone penetration Q1 to Q2 this year is pretty impressive, maybe 2009 really will be the year of mobile.  My real bet is on 2010, but there's some really cool things happening already in the mobile space, from augmented reality Layars to apps to new handset technology.

I was living and working in Italy in 1996, and remember being somewhat agog at seeing someone walking around a church with a phone clamped to their ear (maybe the big G is now communicating on a whole new level!?), so I'm not really surprised to see the Italians leading the way with smartphone penetration. They have always loved mobile, and many of them have multiple handsets on multiple networks because the inter-network call/text tariffs are bonkers expensive.  Thank goodness that's not quite the case in the UK as having to remember what network my friends are on would be a challenge.

What's interesting is that the in-the-grand-scheme small number of smartphone owners account for around half the mobile web browsing. 

Has your brand worked out its mobile strategy?