From what I've read and seen in videos about it, that seems to be the case in much of the US as well. In Australia you can get ducted systems, but at the resid

From what I've read and seen in videos about it, that seems to be the case in much of the US as well. In Australia you can get ducted systems, but at the residential scale it's both more expensive and less efficient than split systems. So houses will often have larger split units (5 - 10kW heat/cool capacity) in the main living areas and then smaller ones (2.5 - 3.5kW capacity) in all the bedrooms. Sometimes you have a multi-head system with one outdoor compressor unit and two or three indoor units. This is even the case for large apartment buildings (often have a separate AC compressor for each unit), but most office and commercial buildings have central AC.