US researcher company comScore says that the umber of Americans using the mobile web has doubled in a year. A colossal 63 million people have accessed news or other online information from their phones, not over the course of the entire year, but on a monthly basis averaged to January 2009.
Of these, 22.4 million have used it to do this every day, and this is the number that has doubled, since January 2008.
‘Over the course of the past year, we have seen use of mobile Internet evolve from an occasional activity to being a daily part of people’s lives,’ observed Mark Donovan, senior vice president, mobile, comScore. ‘This underscores the growing importance of the mobile medium as consumers become more reliant on their mobile devices to access time-sensitive and utilitarian information.’
comScore goes on to try to work out just what it is that people are using the internet for and the clear winner with the most rampant growth is accessing social networks. This grew 427% and makes up almost half the people using the mobile web every day, at over 9 million.
‘Social networking and blogging have emerged as very popular daily uses of the mobile Web and these activities are growing at a torrid pace,’ observed Donovan. ‘We also note that much of the growth in news and information usage is driven by the increased popularity of downloaded applications, such as those offered for the iPhone, and by text-based searches. While smartphones and high-end feature phones, like the Samsung Instinct and LG Dare comprise the Top 10 devices used for news and information access, 70% of those accessing mobile Internet content are using feature phones.’
In January, 22.3 million people accessed news and information via a downloaded application. Maps are the most popular downloaded application with 8.2 million users, while search was the overwhelmingly favored use for SMS-based news and information access, with 14.1 million users. Overall, 32.4 million people used SMS to access news and information in January.
Young males are the most avid users of mobile news and information, with half of 18 to 34-year-old males engaging in the activity.
One more year at that pace and social networking will become the out and out leader in online mobile activity.