Analysis of smartphone adoption and usage in a rural community cellular network

Abstract

The smartphone has been touted as the technology of the 21st century. Global smartphone adoption rates are growing rapidly, up to over 24% in 2014, with usage increasing 25% in the last year. However, rural areas are often the last places to benefit from these technological trends. Utilizing cellular network registration logs, we explore the adoption and usage of smartphones in an extremely remote community in Indonesia. We found that 16% of the phones in the area were smartphones (compared to between 14--24% in Indonesia). This shows that smartphone adoption in rural Indonesia is similar to the rest of the country. We also explored usage in the network, and found that smartphone users were more likely to text, especially to other smartphone users.