Middle East is leading the smartphone race globally with 62 percent of mobile users being on smartphones in UAE and 60 percent in Saudi Arabia, Our Mobile Planet and Ipsos MediaCT said in a study published Wednesday. In the UAE, 71 percent of users are accessing internet every day and 75 percent use their smartphones at airports, proving that the UAE is an international hub. Smartphone owners in the Middle East are the most active mobile shoppers. In Egypt, 41 percent of smartphone owners have a made a purchase on their mobile device, and of these mobile shoppers 80 percent make purchases once a month or more. The monthly shopping behavior is the highest out of all of the countries that participated and in fact, 46 percent of Egyptians expect to make more mobile purchases in the future. Mobile consumers in the Middle East are also using their smartphones to engage with online and offline advertisements. More than three fourth of smartphone users in Egypt have performed a mobile search after seeing an ad such as a TV commercial offline. Although, only half look at the first page of search results on their phones, more than 90 percent of smartphone users in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and UAE notice mobile advertising when they are surfing the mobile web. Moreover, more than half of consumers in the UK, Norway and Sweden now have a smartphones. Smartphone adoption in these three countries increased by over 20 percent.
