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Smartphones are becoming smarter through machine learning, but consumers often have no idea how to turn that technology into their hands. A Belgian survey shows that 42 percent of smartphone owners have never used a machine learning function.

In their Mobile Consumer Survey, the Deloitte researchers come to the conclusion that machine learning is still a far-off-my-bed show for many Belgians. 31 percent did not know anything about these intelligent functions and 42 percent never said they would use it. The most popular machine learning application is smart text prediction, which is actively used by 29 percent of Belgians. Only 19 percent of those surveyed use the smart route suggestions that navigation apps can offer and personalized news updates are ranked third by 13 percent.

Smart assistants in Belgium have only penetrated up to 8 percent of the population, but that low figure is also because the Google Assistant in Belgium is officially not yet available. It is remarkable that the research does not seem to take into account the photographic functions based on machine learning, which appear in more and more smartphones. Consumers were only asked if they ever used the function that automatically catalogs their snaps, to which only 8 percent gave a positive answer.

The survey also shows that Belgians owned more smartphones for the first time in 2018 than laptops, with coverage of 84 versus 82 percent. Nevertheless, the Belgian buys a new phone less often than in the past. In 2016, 62 percent of those surveyed had their smartphone eighteen months or less in its possession; today only 55 percent have such a relatively young phone. Deloitte concludes that the smartphone market is very saturated, especially among Belgian young people. “The potential for the biggest sales increase is in the category of the over-65s”, says Vincent Fosty, Technology, Media and Telecommunications Industry Leader at Deloitte Belgium. Of this group of seniors, 69 percent currently have a smartphone in Belgium.