Smartphones will overtake cash, Telstra says

DAVID SWAN
November 1, 2017
The Australian
Smartphones are on their way to being more popular than cash to pay for goods and services, ten years since the first consumer smartphone launched in Australia.
That’s according to Telstra’s eighth annual smartphone index, which says smartphone penetration has hit a record high 91 per cent among mobile users in Australia.
The research, released today ahead of the iPhone X launch next week, found a third of active Australian smartphone users are now using their phones to pay for goods and services in store, with millennials leading the charge. And that number is on the rise.
Three of Australia’s big four banks announced earlier this week they would band together to create ‘Beem’, a smartphone app for requesting and sending payments.
Meanwhile more than a quarter of millenials are using their smartphone to find love, using their device at least weekly to access dating apps like Tinder, RSVP and eHarmony. 96 per cent of smartphone users use the device to take photos, with 58 per cent taking selfies and 44 per cent taking photos of their food.
The rapid change in how we use our phones has meant Telstra has had to reinvent itself, and its networks. Telstra’s head of mobile products Kevin Teoh National said data usage on the Telstra network has leapt 180 times since 2008 — from just 2.3 petabytes to 420 petabytes in 2017.
According to Mr Teoh voice calls in 2008 accounted for 99 per cent of all mobile usage, while today 98 per cent of mobile activity is data.
“Since 2007 when Telstra launched Australia’s first consumer smartphone — the Nokia N95 — these devices have become central to almost every digital task we carry out, every social connection we make and every piece of entertainment we consume,” Mr Teoh said.
“A year later Apple launched iPhone 3G and with its touch screen, app store and gesture control defined what Australians expect from their mobile. It helped to create countless cultural trends — from the selfie to the streaming phenomenon.”
Mr Teoh said Telstra’s research shows smartphone connectivity has become ubiquitous across most of the population and around the clock, with almost 8 in ten smartphone users accessing the internet on a daily basis via their smartphone — up from 53 per cent in 2010.
“49 per cent of Australian smartphone owners turn to their social media feeds, email inbox and the internet generally for the latest updates first thing in the morning, while the evening is all about entertainment, with 39 per cent of owners streaming TV and movies via their smartphones,” he said.
“Over the decade we’ve evolved our network to unlock even greater smartphone capabilities increasing data download speeds 100-fold and rolling out 4G coverage to 99 per cent of the population enabling everything from video streaming and virtual assistants to the Pokemon Go craze in the process.
“It’s exciting to think about what the next ten years might hold. As smartphones evolve and we move into the 5G era there will be a new raft of sophisticated features that make them even more indispensable. High quality augmented reality, virtual personal assistants that anticipate your needs and virtual doctors that monitor vital signs are just some of the technologies that are on the horizon.”