Orange charts 500% boost in mobile broadband dongles

 

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Posted on 14 May 2009 at 11:07

Orange claims the number of customers taking out mobile broadband dongle subscriptions has risen by over 500% in the past year.

The mobile network claims it now has 3.8 million customers who are equipped with either a broadband dongle or 3G mobile handset.

Inevitably, this has created a huge surge in the amount of mobile data downloaded, with Orange claiming a rise of 108% on the same period last year.

The Orange survey shows that people are clearly keen to go beyond the network's mobile content portal, with search engine activity rising by 120%. Of those searching, 45% of those search results taking people off portal.

Social networking is the most searched for category, followed by ringtones & downloads and games. "There has been an unprecedented upsurge in the number of customers accessing social-networking sites via their mobile phones, with unique users increasing by 50% since the last report," claims Mark Watts-Jones, head of product management at Orange.

Mobile video has also seen a healthy boost in activity, with video downloads up 38% from last year.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, top-shelf content is highly popular on mobiles. "Babes" accounts for 14% of video downloads, while "adult" makes up 9%. Combined together, they outrank the most popular category, Sport, which accounts for a fifth of all mobile video downloads.