European mobile phone use booming

Young mobile users are the most "tech-savvy"

Europe now accounts for one-fifth of mobile phones in the world, although it has only 9% of the global population, at 650 million people.

According to a report from GfK, 2006 Mobile Report, last year the European mobile phone market grew by 5%, with more than 210 million handsets sold.

Russia was the largest market in Europe with sales of 33 million handsets.

Meanwhile, 84% of Europeans aged 12 to 24 who use the internet now have mobile phones, Forrester Research says.

'Untapped opportunities'

In its report into mobile use among European youth, Forrester found that this segment of phone owners used their mobiles more often than adults, exploiting a wider range of services and phone features.

Forrester also found that basic SMS was still the most widely used non-voice mobile service.

It remained by far the most popular method to get content such as ringtones and news on the mobile - with more than 60% of young consumers using these services.

"Although young consumers are tech-savvy, they only adopt those services that have real benefits," the report said.

"Product managers need to understand more than just the mobile behaviour of this segment to see that untapped opportunities for new service development lie in connecting mobile services with popular online social media."

'More mature'

In its look at the European market GfK Germany overtook the UK as the second largest European market, growing by over a million new handsets year-on-year.

The report said that the fastest growth is coming from less mature markets, with sales in Bulgaria up 35% on the previous year.

The strongest growth in the last year was in developing countries in eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Greece and Turkey.

Aaron Rattue, business group director at GfK, said: "The more mature and highly penetrated markets, such as UK and Italy, have not grown as strongly in 2006."