New research from comScore released today reveals that Smartphone adoption in the EU5 (UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy) has grown 32% over the past year, to 51.6 million subscribers. Whilst growth can be seen across the range of monthly subscription fees, the mid- to low-tier segment is growing faster than high-tier subscriptions in each of the EU5 markets.
The UK market leads in the growth of Smartphone adoption over the past year, growing 70% to 11.1 million subscribers. France ranks second in growth with the number of Smartphone subscribers up 48% to 7.1 million.  Meanwhile, Italy boasts the largest number of Smartphone subscribers overall (15 million) but showed the softest growth in this market at 11%. Germany has 8.4 million Smrtphomne subscribers (up 34%), while Spain has 9.9 million (up 27%).
In evaluating monthly subscription fees, the high-tier segment (greater than 35 in UK  and 50 in Euro currency countries) is not growing as strongly as the mid- to low-tier. The UK  has the highest pace of both mid- to low-tier adoption (up 76%) and high-tier adoption (up 60%), followed by France (52% and 43%, respectively).
Smartphones are generally seen as luxury devices that come with big price tags and high monthly tariffs, yet the largest segment of the market and the one demonstrating greatest momentum is actually the low- to mid-tier, says Alistair Hill, Senior Mobile Analyst at comScore. The growth in these tiers suggests that as Smartphones become more affordable to the majority of European consumers, their proliferation will increase considerably, and lead to a surge in mobile content and data consumption. Such market dynamics offer substantial opportunity for different players in the mobile ecosystem – from operators and manufacturers to publishers and advertisers – and underscore the importance of competing for customers now to engender long-term loyalty.
Symbian is the top Smartphone platform in all the EU5 countries, averaging a 60.9% share of total subscribers. In Italy, Symbian has a 75.7% share, though in France, it is at its lowest, at 40.7%. Apple is second overall on 14.5%, with Microsoft third on 14.1%, RIM fourth on 8.3% and Google fifth on 2%. Apples share varied widely across the EU5 countries, peaking at 29.9% in France and reaching 20.5% in the UK, but registering only 7.7% in Italy and 6.5% in Spain. Apples share of the market in Germany is 15.3%.
comScore has also released its January 2010 benchmark data, covering the period from 1 November 2009 31 January 2010, which includes a review of mobile consumption behaviours and device penetration for the EU5 countries. This reveals that overall Smartphone penetration across the EU5 stands at 22.6%, while 3G penetration stands at 42.4%.
When it comes to what people are doing on their phones, the most popular activity is sending a text message (83.5%), followed by using an application, including games (33.4%); listening to music (22.7%); mobile browsing (22.2%); and, surprisingly low given the figures released by comScore as part of the Mobile Media Metrics launch in February, accessing a social networking site or blog (11.3%). 9.6% of EU subscribers had accessed news via their mobile during the period.