Characteristics and mobile Internet use intensity of consumers with different types of advanced handsets: An exploratory empirical study of iPhone, Android and other web-enabled mobile users in Germany

This work explores personal characteristics and mobile Internet (MI) use behaviors of consumers equipped with four distinct types of advanced handsets for accessing the Internet via cellular radio infrastructures of mobile network operators (MNO). Furthermore, it investigates the extent to which personal and mobile appliance characteristics explain variance in actual MI use intensity. Data on two demographic variables, three MNO relationship characteristics and actual MI use intensity (average monthly volume of mobile IP traffic generated by a subscriber in May and June 2011) of 9321 adult consumers with a flat MI pricing scheme are extracted from customer files of the German subsidiary of a large international MNO. 959, 2213, 2410 and 3739 of the sample members use an Apple iPhone 3, an Apple iPhone 4, a model running with Google’s Android operating system (OS) and other MI-enabled mobile OS/phone types, respectively. Compared to the adult population in Germany, persons at least 50 years of age are clearly underrepresented among MI adopters with the four studied device types. Differences between the four phone type groups with regard to gender, age, time from enrollment and MI use experience emerge as statistically significant, but they achieve only minor substantial relevance. MI use intensity is highly positively skewed: In each of the four appliance groups, a small number of users disproportionately add to the total MI traffic generated by the subjects. Consumers’ advanced OS/handset type strongly contributes towards explaining MI use intensity variance. iPhone subscribers generate more traffic than Android customers who in turn show a higher MI activity level than individuals running other web-enabled mobile models. Age is the only studied personal characteristic consistently showing a (negative) association with MI usage, which both is statistically and materially significant. Conclusions are drawn for MNO on MI marketing issues. Implications of study limitations for research on MI adoption and use behaviors on the MI are also outlined.