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The Rise of the Mobile Internet

The use of the mobile Internet is driving mobile device growth exponentially faster than any previous computing technology.

Sony Ericsson, the world’s largest manufacturer of telecomm’s equipment, estimates that 3.6 billion people have mobile phones. That’s over half of the world’s 6.8 billion population. Mobile Internet devices could reach 10 billion units by the end of 2010.

It has been predicted that the mobile Internet is growing faster and will be bigger than the desktop Internet in 2013. This is down to five converging technologies and social adoption trends: 3G, social networking, video, VoIP and impressive mobile devices.  More people have Internet access via mobile phone than a PC. According to a new Quantcast Mobile Trends report, the mobile Web grew 110% in the U.S. last year and 148% worldwide as measured by growth in pageviews.

Mobile Internet Usage

87% of users access mobile internet more than once a day.
50% access it more than 5 times a day
81% surf for 15 minutes each day.
71 million users access the internet via a mobile device averaging nearly 1 hour of mobile connection per day.
70% of mobile Internet users take place in their home.
40% of adults use the internet, email or instant messaging on a mobile phone.
The younger generation of early adopters is driving the increase in mobile internet access with:
24% in the age group 16-24 spending 7.2 hours per week online.
21% in the age group 25-34 spending 6.6 hours per week online.
This is compared to 4.8 hours reading newspapers and 4.1 hours reading magazines.

What are people using the mobile internet for?

16% Entertainment
10% Information
13% Financial & Banking
34% Prepay Services
5% Purchasing Games & Shopping

What are people looking at?

25% of the UK’s population or 16 million people access the internet from their mobile phones and view a total of 6.7bn pages a month. Facebook accounts for 2.6bn page views, nearly three times as many as Google, and more than a third of the 6.7bn total.

Mobile minutes spent online per month:
1. Facebook 2.2 bn
2. Google 396m
3. Microsoft Sites 166m
4. Orange Sites 139m
5. AOL (and Bebo) 106m
6. Apple 104m
7. Vodafone 89m
8. BBC sites 84m
9. Flirtomatic 55m
10. Yahoo 49m

Mobile Advertising

37% of adults say they are open to mobile ads & incentives, of those currently receiving text advertising, 45% have responded to it.
Text campaigns achieve 15% to 30% response rate. In comparison, email is 5% and snail mail is 2.61%.

Mobile Social Networking

60% of users use the mobile internet for social networking. The average mobile user of MySpace and Facebook spends 30 and 40 minutes using them a week, respectively.
There are more than 150 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices. People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
There are more than 200 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products.

Data Applications

The use of non-voice data applications on mobile phones has grown dramatically over the last year. Compared with a similar point in 2009, mobile phone owners are now more likely to use their mobile phones to:
Take pictures — 76% now do this, up from 66% in April 2009.
Send or receive text messages — 72% vs. 65%
Access the internet — 38% vs. 25%
Play games — 34% vs. 27%
Send or receive email — 34% vs. 25%
Record a video — 34% vs. 19%
Play music — 33% vs. 21%
Send or receive instant messages — 30% vs. 20%

To conclude we’ll leave on a statistic that makes us smile — The Crazy Frog ringtone became the first mobile ringtone to cross over into the mainstream music charts, beating Coldplay for the Number 1 spot on the UK charts.

Published August 20, 2010

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