Op-ed - Written Monday, December 15, 2008 by Naumi Haque - 6 Comments

The smaller your home, the cooler your phone

The Wikinomics team recently sat down for lunch with Aaron Kim, Senior Managing Consultant in Emerging Technologies for IBM Global Business Services (blog, Twitter). Among the various meandering discussions, one of the more interesting observations made was Aaron’s notion that population density and average home size has a direct relationship with mobile technology adoption.

It makes sense intuitively; the higher the population density and the tighter the living quarters, the more likely you are to spend time away from home or in “third spaces.” Similarly, if you have a large comfortable home and long distances make travel more infrequent, you will be less likely to need “on-the-go” technology, and more likely to invest in desktop computers and broadband in the home. The proposition that one’s propensity to use mobile tech is directly related to population density is an intriguing one, so I thought I’d do some further investigation. Using population density figures from Wikipedia along with mobile penetration stats from the OECD and wireless penetration rates from RCR Wireless, I compiled a chart showing data from 20 countries.

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