Oh crap – I just dropped my phone down the loo!

By Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 19 January 2009 07:48

Strategy

Although Microsoft’s new survey on mobile phone usage in the bathroom/toilet/lavatory makes no mention of bathroom based mobile mishaps, with nearly 50% of Aussies using their phones in the so-called “rest room”, why didn’t they ask this question?

In what could well be the weirdest way to whip up some publicity for Windows Mobile thus far in 2009, Microsoft’s Mobile Communications Business unit has commissioned a company called Synovate to reveal “exactly how integral the mobile phone has become to Australians.”

Synovate was motivated by Microsoft to interview nearly 2,500 respondents across Australia, Japan, China, India and Taiwan (between Sept and Dec 2008), so while it’s not an Australia-only survey, the results provided to the press almost entirely refer to Australia only.

Apparently there were around 500 Australian respondents, which suggests there were similar numbers for each country.

It would have been interesting to see how we compared with our Asian counterparts across all areas of phone usage – only a few cross regional comparisons are made.

Still, the stats provided on Australian usage and preferences do make for interesting reading, so here’s what was discovered:

- 48% of Australians use their mobile phone while in the lavatory. However, Australians are not the highest users of mobile phones in the bathroom across APAC; Taiwan and China have the highest incidences of mobile phone use in the lavatory, at 68% and 66% respectively.

There’s no specific indication whether this is making and receiving phone calls, surfing the web, sending or receiving emails and SMS, listening to music, watching video, looking at photos etc – so presumably it is a combination of all of these activities.

Given that reading a magazine or a book is something that people do in “rest rooms”, using a digital device to consume media or send SMS/email messages is no surprise. Spoken communications is another matter but there are many for whom being in the bathroom is no obstacle…

The survey then uncovers that the four most popular mobile phone usage occasions in Australia are while eating a meal with other people (80%), while driving (62%), while using the loo (48%) and while trying to sleep (48%).

I guess “using” your phone while trying to sleep is like reading a book before going to sleep… unless you’re a “Zzz-mailer” that sends emails (or texts) while actually asleep.

More surprising stats are on page 2… please read on!