Google claims mobile internet has come of age

 

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By Reuters

Posted on 19 Mar 2008 at 08:48

Google claims we're on the cusp of a mobile internet era, following a surge of web usage on mobile handsets.

The company has witnessed a sharp increases in internet usage on phones, since it began offering improved services on Blackberry, Nokia and iPhone devices.

"We have very much hit a watershed moment in terms of mobile internet usage," claims Matt Waddell, a product manager for Google Mobile. "We are seeing that mobile internet use is in fact accelerating."

The growing availability of flat-rate data plans, along with improved web browsers on mobile phones and better-designed services from companies such as Google are fueling the growth, Waddell argues.

Google made the pronouncement as it introduced a new software download for mobile phones running Windows Mobile, which positions a Google web search window on the home screen of such phones.

Similar versions of the search software Google introduced for Blackberry users in December and certain Nokia phones in February have sped up the time users take to perform web searches by 40%, according to Google, helping to drive usage.

The software shortcuts the time it takes for people to perform web searches on Google by eliminating the initial steps of finding a web browser on the phone, opening it, waiting for network access, and navigating to Google.com. "We are actually seeing a 20% increase in the number of searches by people," Waddell adds.

Google officials said in August that they had seen a similar surge in usage of Google.com via mobile devices following the launch of the Apple iPhone last year. The iPhone offers a full web browser, unlike many phones.

Waddell said Google had seen iPhone users perform as many as 50 times more web searches than standard mobile owners typically do.