Worldwide Mobile Phone Capabilities in 2010

Update: this post has been updated and expanded here.

In a previous post, we looked at what the most popular mobile phone operating systems were in 2010, based on web traffic. As a follow-up to that post, the chart below shows the worldwide mobile phone capabilities in 2010. The numbers are all from this article on the blog of Tomi T. Ahonen, a mobile phone researcher. (Click the charts for a larger version.)

Note that:

• 97% of mobile phones have at least a basic web browser (WAP or something like it).
• 92% are data-capable (can access the Internet), though only 35% can do so over a high-speed (3G) connection
• 85% support MMS (multimedia text messaging)
• 76% have a full browser (HTML type of browser)
• 62% have a media player

These numbers are significant in the development of ministry platforms that use mobile phone technology as a content creation and/or distribution mechanism. Two other factors that are significant:

• only 21% support WiFi
• only 17% are smartphones

Another chart of data from an article on Tomi's blog shows the price breakdown of mobile phones worldwide:

Both sets of numbers indicate that while highly-capable smartphones are increasing in popularity in some parts of the world, the world as a whole is not there (yet). The baseline capabilities for most phones worldwide apart from making calls and sending text messages are: basic data access, viewing of simple web pages and basic media capabilities.