• by Steve Smith  @popeyesm, May 16, 2012

How does app use compare across the U.S., India and UK markets? Are women more reticent to buy items via their smartphone in Japan than they are in Germany? How do the smartphone demos break down across Malaysia versus the U.S.? These are the kinds of mobile market questions that “Our Mobile Planet” can answer via a series of interactive custom chart builders.

The relaunched effort from Google and now the Mobile Marketing Association, IAB and research firm Ipsos aggregates data from 40 countries in 22 languages. The user can check off countries and attributes that he or she wants to track across markets, and the site generates charts on the fly that the user can download.

The Mobile Planet initiative first launched in October, but this version has been refreshed with the latest data from Ipsos GmbH, which Google commissioned. The newer data set brings 26 countries up to date with Q1 2012 surveys.

The site has scores of parameters in the database, from attitudes toward mobile advertising to specific smartphone usage, including m-commerce activity. The data set addresses smartphones specifically, so it is likely less useful in emerging markets where feature phones continue to dominate. 

The strength of the site is in its customization, allowing marketers to craft a limitless combination of data runs against the engine. You can select all countries in the database and run specific queries to see where there is the highest level of home smartphone use. The bar charts are themselves interactive. Mouse-ing over any piece of the chart renders the exact number associated with the chart.

Which country has a higher penetration of the Android operating system among smartphone owners than the U.S., which is at 40%, according to this data? Well, New Zealand has 41% and Japan has a massive 55%. And where is RIM/BlackBerry still king? Well, definitely not in the U.S., where the Mobile Planet chart sees penetration down to 11%. But RIM home base Canada remains loyal, with 23% smartphone penetration of BlackBerry. The Middle East remains the BlackBerry sweet spot, with a 35% penetration in Saudi Arabia and a 42% penetration in the United Arab Emirates.