Three: 9 in 10 customers to buy smartphones

UK network operator Three has said that 90 percent of its customers will be smartphone owners by the end of 2012.

The company said it had seen a 30 percent increase between 2010 and 2011, from 30-to-60 percent, and added that it expected this to continue into 2012 "based on current and predicted trends".

A Three spokesman confirmed to ZDNet UK on Monday that it now offers very few feature phone devices, with customers favouring a full smartphone experience; partially defined by the company as the presence of a Qwerty keyboard or a touchscreen display on a handset.

The company also elaborated on an earlier announcement which said that 97 percent of its network traffic is now data. In total, 137 terabytes of data, equating to nearly 36 million iTunes tracks, are used by customers every day on its network, Three said. It added that this figure equates for 40 percent of the total of UK data traffic.

Also contributing to the large amount of traffic is social networking activities, with Facebook topping the list at 1.24 billion Facebook pages viewed per month.

The details follow comments from the communications ombudsman on 18 November who said operators should be doing more to make their data pricing structures more transparent in order to help avoid 'bill shock' related to data usage.

As the result of European rules brought into effect in March 2010, networks are required to inform customers roaming within the EU when they reach €50 (£43) in data charges and cut off the service. However, domestic data usage within the UK — or use outside of the EU — is not subject to the same regulations.