Digital measurement company comScore Inc. outlined the impact that the first three generations of Apple?s iPhone have had on the European mobile market in light of record pre-sales and extraordinary consumer demand for the iPhone 4.

The iPhone currently represents just 4 percent of the EU5 mobile market ?Britian, France, Germany, Spain and Italy?but 18 percent of the overall EU5 smartphone market. However, the iPhone has facilitated fundamental change in mobile user behavior and ignited fierce competition among device and operating system providers, as iPhone owners are the most voracious consumers of mobile media?in fact, 94 percent use mobile media.

Mobile Marketer?s Dan Butcher interviewed Jeremy Copp, London-based vice president of mobile for Europe at comScore.

To what do you attribute the fact that, despite the iPhone?s relatively small market share in Europe, the iPhone accounts for a large amount of mobile media consumption?
I believe there are a number of factors contributing to the large amount of mobile media consumption on iPhone:

A majority of iPhones are sold with a flat-rate data plan, meaning that users have full connectivity out of the box without worrying about incremental data costs.

The great user experience offered by iPhones makes it easy to consume media: browsing, applications, music and others.

The vertically integrated ecosystem is offered by Apple for iPhone users to access media through the iTunes store.

How has the iPhone changed mobile user behavior? What does that mean for marketers and content providers?
Apple has done an incredibly good job in raising consumer awareness and accelerating the use of mobile Internet browsing, music consumption and application usage, creating a mobile media marketplace that an increasing number of smartphone vendors are able to participate in.

For marketers and advertisers, this is resulting in a rapidly expanding ecosystem for engagement with mobile consumers through a variety of mechanisms?mobile Internet and application display advertising, search and direct marketing and response through messaging, amongst others.

Content providers now have a number of highly capable mobile platforms to which they can deliver ever richer media, which are owned by consumers more willing to engage in consumption.

How does the iPhone demographic differ from users of other smartphone platforms?
There is no significant difference in the age and gender profiles for EU5 users of Apple platform devices compared to devices using platforms from Symbian, RIM, Google and Microsoft: All are skewed to a male populace with a majority of users age 18-44.

Our data shows that the only anomaly is that Microsoft platform devices have a higher proportion of male users?72 percent?compared to the others at 60-65 percent, though they are a small proportion of the overall market.

What is the market share of Nokia, RIM/BlackBerry, Android and Windows Mobile in Europe?
Overall market share in EU5 is as follows: Nokia?s Symbian, 15 percent; RIM?s BlackBerry, 2 percent; Google?s Android, 1 percent; Microsoft?s Windows Mobile, 3 percent; and Apple, 4 percent.

To what do you attribute Nokia?s strength in Europe and weakness in North America?
It is my belief that Nokia has struggled to establish itself in North America firstly because they failed to offer a broad enough array of CDMA devices, thereby missing a significant segment of the carrier market, and potentially secondly because they failed to understand the consumer requirements of the market.

For some time they steadfastly refused to believe that consumers wanted a flip phone form factor whilst Motorola cleaned up with the RAZR. They have always been strong in their home and export GSM-based markets.