Mobile internet on huge growth spurt

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 24 Nov 2008 at 14:24

The number of Britons accessing the internet from their mobile phone grew by 25% between Q2 and Q3 this year.

Nielsen Online claims that 7.3 million Brits now access the internet from their phone, up from 5.8 million in Q2 of this year.

"Unlimited" mobile data tariffs and a raft of new handsets with full internet browsing have made browsing the web on mobile devices a far more attractive proposition.

Young people, in particular, are more inclined to turn to their phone for internet access. A quarter of mobile internet users are aged between 15-24, according to Nielsen; that age group accounts for only 16% of PC-based internet users.

The BBC is particularly popular among mobile surfers, with three of the Corporation's sites listed in the top ten mobile sites visited by Britons. BBC News is the most popular mobile site overall, with 24% of mobile surfers visiting the site, with Weather (21%) in third and Sport (14%) in sixth.

"It's interesting to see that BBC Weather, Sky Sports and Gmail are amongst the few sites that have a greater reach on the mobile internet than the PC-based internet," says Kent Ferguson, senior analyst at Neilsen.

"This highlights the advantage of mobile when it comes to immediacy; people often need fast, instant access to weather or sports news and mobile can obviously satisfy this, wherever they are."