20% of UK mobile users now surf the web by phone

UK online retail group – IMRG – is reporting that more than 20% of UK mobile internet users now use their phones to surf the web. Moreover the popularity of mobile based Internet is growing rapidly.
IMRG says Nielsens has a new study out suggesting that some 10.4million persons in the UK were mobile Internet users in the September quarter of 2009, up from 8.8million in the previous quarter.
Surfing web-sites was the most frequent online activity for UK mobile users, with downloading applications or software the second most popular online activity.
Some 4.1 million Britons downloaded applications or software in Q3, up from 3.1 million in Q2, said Nielsens.
Surprisingly, the UK mobile Internet phenomenon appears not to be driven by Apple’s iPhone.
Nielsens said that whilst the number of ‘smartphone’ users in the UK increased 10% between Q2 and Q3, from 5.6 million to 6.2 million, Nokia is the most popular brand of smartphone.
Nokia is said to have 44% of the UK smartphone market.
The  Blackberry is however, the fastest-growing, and now has 19% of the UK smartphone market.
Even so, smartphones remain a relatively small proportion of the overall UK mobiles market, accounting for just 15% of all UK mobile users.
Edward Kershaw, V-P of Mobile Media at Nielsen’s said that whilst the hype about new mobile technologies such as video services and location-based services reflects increases in their popularity, they are still niche activities.
“Although the era of the handset as a truly multi-media device on a mass-market level lies somewhere on the horizon, the key for companies to successfully harness mobile lies in a realistic understanding of what media activities people on a large-scale are actually doing on their handsets now.”

www.imrg.co.uk

Be Sociable, Share!

•