Nielsen this week took a look at two of the world's "most highly mobile cultures," Japan and the United Kingdom, and found a couple of countries where cell phones are nearly ubiquitous but used in different ways.

The research firm's study of handset usage patterns in the two ultra-connected nations found that mobile markets are not one-size-fits-all affairs. For instance, U.K. cell phone users were more than twice as likely to own smartphones as their Japanese counterparts.

In fact, some 61 percent of U.K. handset owners had a smartphone at the start of last year, according to Nielsen. Just 24 percent of Japanese cell phones were smartphones during that period but those in Japan who did have a smartphone likely had a gold-plated plansome 92 percent had unlimited data, the research firm reported.

Smartphone owners in the two countries take advantage of different features and services available on their phones, the study found. In Japan, using search and portals to navigate the Internet on a smartphone is the norm, with between 50 and 70 percent of smartphone owners doing so, according to Nielsen. In the U.K., smartphone owners are more likely than their Japanese counterparts to directly access specific destinations like news and sports sites on their devices.

The Japanese are hungrier for smartphone apps, averaging 10 apps on their smartphones, compared with six apps on the average U.K. user's device, Nielsen found. Japan's smartphone owners are also more active on social networks than Britons "and nearly twice as likely to use these sites multiple times per day," according to the study.

At that all-important confluence of social and mobile, smartphone users in the two countries behave quite differently, Nielsen said. Britons are more "passive" users of social networks on their devices, with more saying they read messages, view pictures, and browse profiles on such sites than their Japanese counterparts.

Japanese frequenters of social sites on mobile devices, by contrast, treat such destinations as interactive social hubs and are more likely than Britons to upload photos, post blogs, and play online games, according to the research firm.

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