U.S. and U.K. Users Represent Half of Mobile Web Browsing

About 29 percent of global mobile Web browsing traffic now happens in the United States, with about 20.3 percent happening in the United Kingdom. Between them, the United States and United Kingdom now represent about half of global mobile Web browsing, says bango.

That might come as a surprise to many. What might be a bigger surprise is the number of people who now land on Web sites using a mobile. That could be an issue: sites not optimized for mobile access might not execute some expected functions at all, others poorly.

But most businesses do not have mobile-optimized websites.“Many people simply have no idea that they have visitors from mobile devices accessing their PC-optimized website, says Anil Malhotra, Bango SVP."These mobile visitors are simply invisible to them.”

The statistics also show that while some countries such as India and Indonesia have a good appetite for browsing on their mobiles, it doesn’t always convert into purchases. In fact, only five countries in the Top-10 browsing chart are also in the Top-10 payments chart. Those countries are the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, South Africa and Spain.

“When it comes to payments though, the US is accelerating faster than any other country and now accounts for 57 percent of payments worldwide,” says Malhotra.

No matter how high the browsing rate, it is only converted into a high purchase rate where people have a good disposable income and can pay for content on their phone bills, bango says. In regions such as India, South Africa, Indonesia and Egypt the driver for mobile browsing is a lack of fixed-line broadband and PCs for accessing the Internet which means that the mobile device is the only way people can get onto the Internet.