# The Social Impact of Rapid ICT Advancement

## Section 1 Lifestyle and Work Style Transformations Caused by ICT Advancement

### 1. Lifestyle transformations caused by ICT advancements

Smartphones and tablets have rapidly spread through and penetrated the Japanese market in the few years since their introduction. According to the Communications Usage Trend Survey, the smartphone household penetration rate crossed 60 percent at the end of 2013, by which time tablets had reached a 20 percent household penetration rate.

Expectations are that smartphones and tablets will continue to proliferate in Japan and elsewhere in the world. The use of SNS and similar services is anticipated to escalate in step with smartphone and tablet growth. As a result, our lifestyles are likely to transform as well.

This section analyzes what sort of transformations will occur in tandem with the widening growth of smartphones and other devices. Our analysis is based on the results of an international Web survey conducted in six countries (Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, South Korea, and Singapore).

## (1) Changes in ICT usage environments

### a. Proliferation of smartphones and other mobile devices

The survey respondents were first asked about personal ownership of popular ICT devices. The penetration rate of PCs was high, at around the 90 percent level, in all six countries. The ownership rate of smartphones in Japan, as mentioned above, was over 50 percent, but the smartphone penetration rate was higher in the other five countries, ranging from 70 to 90 percent. Around 70 percent of American and French respondents own smartphones, while smartphone ownership was around 90 percent in South Korea and Singapore.

Feature phone ownership in Japan was distinctly different from that in the other countries, with just under 30 percent of respondents either owning just a feature phone or a feature phone in addition to a smartphone (Figure 4-1-1-1).

### b. Changes in mobile and other data communication networks

The shift to smartphones has made it easier to view rich content, such as pictures and videos, and the conditions around mobile data networks, in particular, have been transformed. In Japan, the migration from feature phones to smartphones coincided with the move from 3G to LTE, and now LTE user numbers are mushrooming (see Chapter 5). The results of the international Web survey reveal that mobile networks are progressing toward higher speeds in all countries, with LTE users already surpassing 3G users in Japan, where about 40 percent of smartphone users use LTE networks, and in South Korea, which has the highest LTE penetration rate, over 60 percent, and with LTE rates climbing to the 30 percent level in Singapore and the United States (Figure 4-1-1-2).

Smartphone users were also asked which device they most frequently use. The combined percentage of smartphone and tablet users was over 30 percent in every country. More than half of smartphone users are smartphone-first users in Japan, South Korea, and Singapore, which are countries where LTE growth is particularly advanced. These results demonstrate that smartphones are becoming the primary ICT device, particularly in these countries.

Figure 4-1-1-1 Smartphone ownership rates

(Source) "Study Report on the Social Impacts of ICT Advancement," MIC (2014)