Historically, consumers in Asia Pacific have done far more activities on their mobile phones than in other regions. With the increasing availability of affordable smartphones in the region, mobile phones are now the No. 1 device for consuming media for many consumers in Asia Pacific. Similarly, activities like playing games (such as word games and puzzle games), listening to music (both streaming and non-streaming), and using social media are increasingly done via mobile phones, and activity levels are now approaching those of PCs.

In recent months, Forrester’s Data Insights team has been analyzing our Technographics® data for the Asia Pacific version of our annual global series, “Understanding The Changing Needs Of Online Consumers.” For the past seven years, Forrester has been tracking consumers’ online and offline behavior in Asia Pacific. In 2012, we surveyed 16,616 Asia Pacific consumers across two surveys to find out about their use of the Internet for media, entertainment, shopping, communication, and social computing.

Some other highlights of our analyses include:

• Asia Pacific consumers consume a lot of media. Just like in the US, online adults in Asia Pacific spend a lot of time online -- from 13 hours a week for Japanese online adults to 21 for online metropolitan Indians. Online media consumption is quite high in metropolitan China and metropolitan India compared with Europe or the US, but traditional media are still important in terms of the number of hours spent on them per week in many countries.
• Social media uptake continues to grow. Our data shows an average 5% increase in social activities in metropolitan India, 12% in metropolitan China, and 24% in Japan over 2011. Each country has its own dynamics with regards to social media: Metropolitan Chinese online adults like microblogging sites (e.g., Weibo), while metropolitan Indian online consumers prefer Facebook.
• Mobiles lead in Asia Pacific. In many Asia Pacific countries, mobile penetration is much higher than that of PCs. As smartphone adoption increases in Asia Pacific, 90% of mobile phone owners in metropolitan China, 81% of mobile phone owners in metropolitan India, and 54% of mobile phone owners in Japan now use the mobile Internet at least monthly.

Technographics clients who want to know more can download the full report here.