GENEVA-Hong Kong and Denmark rank highest in a new study that predicts which economies are likely to prove the most fertile ground for mobile Internet development.
The study, conducted by the International Telecommunication Union, said several factors, including deployment of third-generation networks, availability and affordability of 3G handsets, and development of mobile content, will enable growth of the mobile Internet.
Although several countries that scored high in the report are high income, there are many low and middle-income countries as well in the list. The report also found that teenagers are the most avid users of the mobile Internet, challenging operators to cater to a segment that generally has less money to spend than older age groups.
The top six countries in the report included Hong Kong, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States and Norway. The countries were ranked using an index composite of 26 separate indicators clustered into factors of infrastructure, use and market structure. Each of the 26 variables is standardized and the standardized variables in each cluster were averaged to come up with a cluster score for each economy. The three cluster scores were weighted and aggregated with 50 percent of the weight going to infrastructure, 25 percent to use and the remaining 25 percent for market structure. The final scored was scaled between 100 and 0.
