About 70 percent of S. Koreans regard smartphones as essential medium: survey

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SEOUL -- About 70 percent of South Koreans consider smartphones as an essential medium for daily life because of various content such as over-the-top and video-on-demand services. Those in their 30s and younger regard smartphones as alternatives to TVs, while smartphones and TVs are complementary for the elderly.

A survey of 6,834 people aged 13 or over showed that 70.3 percent chose smartphones as an essential medium for daily life in 2021, up from 55.5 percent in 2016. About 27.1 percent selected TVs as an essential medium, down 11.5 percent from 2016.

The survey, conducted by the Korea Information Society Development Institute (KISDI), a state-funded research body, analyzed the characteristics of smartphone usage by generation and explored whether smartphones are alternatives to TVs. The importance of smartphones for content usage has increased in all ages except for those aged 70 or more.

Some 93.4 percent of South Koreans owned smartphones as of 2021. About 10,000 terabytes of video content were consumed daily by South Koreans using smartphones and mobile devices in September 2021. One terabyte is equal to 1,000 gigabytes. Various YouTube content is being consumed through smartphones. According to WiseApp, a smartphone app market research company, 40.41 million South Koreans used the YouTube app in January 2021 and the average time each person spent on YouTube was about 30 hours and 34 minutes per month.

Kim Joo-heon jhkim123@ajunews.com

About 70 percent of S. Koreans regard smartphones as essential medium: survey

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