Mobile Device Type Substitution

TL;DR

This study analyzes how different mobile device types such as tablets and PCs substitute or add to smartphone usage, revealing partial substitution and significant inter-user variability through regression analysis of large user data.

Contribution

It provides a detailed empirical analysis of mobile device substitution patterns using large-scale multidevice usage data, addressing gaps in prior research.

Findings

Tablets and PCs partially substitute smartphones, reducing usage by about 12.5 and 13 hours/month.

Tablets and PCs also lead to additional usage of approximately 20 and 57 hours/month.

Significant inter-user diversity exists in substitution and additional usage patterns.

Abstract

Mobile users today interact with a variety of mobile device types including smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, and others. However research on mobile device type substitution has been limited in several respects including a lack of detailed and robust analyses. Therefore, in this work we study mobile device type substitution through analysis of multidevice usage data from a large US-based user panel. Specifically, we use regression analysis over paired user groups to test five device type substitution hypotheses. We find that both tablets and PCs are partial substitutes for smartphones with tablet and PC ownership decreasing smartphone usage by about 12.5 and 13 hours/month respectively. Additionally, we find that tablets and PCs also prompt about 20 and 57 hours/month respectively of additional (non-substituted) usage. We also illustrate significant inter-user diversity in substituted and additional usage. Overall, our results can help in understanding the relative positioning of different mobile device types and in parameterizing higher level mobile ecosystem models.