Only the Youngest and Oldest Do not Use Mobile Services in Bulgaria

Only the youngest and oldest Bulgarians do not use mobile services through a smartphone, according to a nationally representative survey of consumer habits and the use of mobile internet. It was conducted by the Market Research Agency "Arbitrage" among 2600 people at the end of last year, ordered by Telenor and announced on Friday by the telecom.

From the presented data it is clear that only 3% of Bulgarians over 15 years do not use mobile phones. "71% of them use their phones to access the internet, with 74% of them using smartphones." In the 7-14 age group, only one out of 10 does not use mobile services, "said Ivan Komitski, senior market research expert at Telenor.

According to the results, more than 90% of mobile users in Bulgaria prefer subscription plans of operators at the expense of prepaid services, with a decrease in the number of customers using two or more mobile operators in recent years.

Among users who do not use mobile phones, most are in the 65-year and older age group.

At the same time, in the last two years, the biggest increase in the penetration of smartphones in Bulgaria is among people in the 55-64 age group. At the end of 2018, about 66% of them used smartphone, while a year earlier their share was 51 percent.

Due to the growth of smartphone penetration among older users, over-the-top (OTT) messaging and conversation services (such as Viber, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, etc.) in the 65+ age group are also rising in 2018 a quarter of them declared that they were using these applications.

The survey also shows that over half of Bulgarian mobile users visit social networks (55%), watch videos (54%) and share pictures (51%) through their mobile phones. About 47% use mobile internet to learn the latest...