Where Will Mobile Internet Behaviors Lead?

The conventional wisdom about communications is that mobile increasingly represents the future for consumers. The devices people will use are mobile phones, smart phones and possibly tablets, but certainly not PCs or fixed network phones as the primary devices.

For example, U.S. mobile data revenues have surpassed voice for the first time. In 2012, for the first time in the history of U.S. mobile communications, customers spent more money on mobile data services ($94.8 billion) than on mobile voice services ($92.4 billion), the Telecommunications Industry Association now says.

The same trend is happening globally. But among the other issues such mobile behavior raises is the future use of both mobile and. fixed networks.

U.K. Android users send and receive 78 percent of all their data over Wi-Fi networks, according to Nielsen

Data collected by Mobidia shows that Wi-Fi usage is close to ubiquitous in developed markets, where more than 90 percent of smart phone users also use Wi-Fi as a means of data connectivity. In Hong Kong and the Netherlands, use of Wi-Fi by smart phone users is over 98 percent.

So though it might not be the main issue, one potential issue is whether, as usage shifts in some markets from voice and messaging to use of the Internet and apps, business models and services based mostly on Wi-Fi access could make more sense, to more users.

To be sure, mobile access always will be vital and valuable in many instances. But the larger business issue is what proportion of value can be supplied by fixed networks, how often, and what value end uses will place on such access.

At least in principle, one could envision scenarios where some users benefit from lower-cost prepaid style “mobile usage” while relying on fixed network access for the bulk of Internet-related operations, which in some cases will become the number one reason for using a smart phone.

In a larger number of instances, even when voice and text are valued, a device will be used primarily for Internet apps, and mostly when users are stationary, rather than out and about. Just as important is the growing importance of access to the Internet as a primary value of a mobile device.

About 25 percent of U.S. teens are “cell-mostly” Internet users, who report they mostly go online using their phone and not using some other device such as a desktop or laptop computer, the3 study by the Pew Research Center has found.

Few would extrapolate in linear fashion to future behavior when those teens grow older and join the workforce. But, as always, youth behavior tends to be a strong indicator of what their preferences will be in the workplace.

So the “money quote” is that “the nature of teens’ Internet use has transformed dramatically, from stationary connections tied to shared desktops in the home to always-on connections that move with them throughout the day,” says Mary Madden, Senior Researcher for the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project.

About 74 percent of teens ages 12 to 17 say they access the Internet on mobile phones, tablets, and other mobile devices at least occasionally, but the 25 percent who say they do so “mostly” on a mobile phone is higher than the 15 percent of adult users who say they are “mobile mostly.”

By comparison, 55 percent of adults use the Internet from a mobile device. However, this gap is driven primarily by adults ages 65 and older.

Adults under the age of 50, on the other hand, are just as likely as teens to be mobile internet users. Fully 74 percent of adults 18 to 49 access the Internet on a mobile  phone, tablet, or other mobile device.

In some cases, teens might use a mobile because they do not have access to a desktop or laptop computer. About 80 percent of teens have their own computer at home.

Among the 20 percent of teens who do not have their own computer, 67 percent have access to one they can use at home. Taken together, this means that 93 percent of teens have a computer or access to one.

The implication there is that teens mostly use mobile to access the Internet because they prefer to use such access. Among teen smart phone owners, 50 percent say they use the internet mostly using their mobile phone.

The findings show not only the prevalence of use of mobile data, but also that mobile access is disproportionately more important for lower-income adults. Adults with an annual household income of less than $50,000 per year and those who have not graduated college are more likely than those with higher levels of income and education to use their phones for most of their online browsing.