Mobile Internet Very Popular in China

For many people in China, the mobile Web is the Web. Not only do many homes in China not have (or need) landlines for voice communications, but also they don’t require hardwired Internet access for their fix of the Web.

With mobile phones, everything they need is in the palm of their hand.

The majority of consumers (54 percent) use their devices for applications including email, gaming and music, while 36 percent used their phones for text, SMS and voice only. Another 10 percent said they used their phones for calls only.

Mobile consumers in China also have surpassed their American counterparts when it comes to using the devices to access the Internet.

About 38 percent of Chinese mobile subscribers access the Internet from their mobiles, compared to 27 percent of American mobile subscribers. That is not so surprising since many Chinese consumers only access the Internet from their mobiles.

Mobile Internet More Popular in China than in U.S. | Nielsen Wire

Not Your Imagination: People Do Different Things on Their Mobiles

The way U.S. consumers spend their Internet time on their mobile phones is different from the way they spend their time when interacting with Internet applications and services on their PCs, the Nielsen Company has found.

If total Internet use were one hour, the top PC apps would be social networking and blogs, at 13 minutes, 36 seconds of use. Games would occupy six minutes, six seconds. Email tasks would consume five minutes. Use of portals would come in at two minutes, 35 seconds. Search would occupy two minutes, six seconds.

On a mobile device, applications usage patterns are very different. Email activities account for 25 minutes, while seven minutes are consumed interacting with portals. Social networking and blogs would occupy six miinutes, 18 seconds, while search would occupy four minutes.

The Nielsen survey also found a28 percent rise in the prevalence of social networking behavior on the part of mobile Internet users, but the dominance of email activity on mobile devices also was highly pronounced, with an increase from 37.4 percent to 41.6 percent of U.S. mobile Internet time.

Portals remain as the second heaviest activity on mobile Internet (11.6 percent share of time), despite their double digit decline and social networking’s rise to account for 10.5 percent share means the gap is much smaller than a year ago (14.3 percent vs. 8.3 percent).

Other mobile Internet activities seeing significant growth include music, video and movies, both seeing 20 percent plus increases in share of activity year over year. As these destinations gain share, it’s at the cost of other content consumption. News, current events and sports destinations saw more than a 20 percent drop in share of U.S. mobile Internet time.

There seems to be a clear lesson here. People do not have unlimited money or time to spend with applications. So as applications proliferate, users will have to make choices about how they use their time. A day, after all, is a zero-sum game. People might be able to multitask up to a point, but only up to a point. Even if users had unlimited funds, they would not have unlimited time to spend on mobile applications.

“Despite the almost unlimited nature of what you can do on the web, 40 percent of U.S. online time is spent on just three activities, social networking, playing games and emailing leaving a whole lot of other sectors fighting for a declining share of the online pie,” said Nielsen analyst Dave Martin.

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Mobile Access: People are Rational

One of the issues when looking at broadband access is the role of demand. People sometimes assume that more people would use broadband if more were available, which ignores the fact that most people do have access, and choose not to buy fixed broadband service, for example, much as most people choose not to buy the fastest-possible speed service.

The point is that consumers are rational: they buy services and products that have value.

Consider use of mobile Internet services. According to researchers at Pew Internet & American Life Project, minority Americans lead the way when it comes to mobile access, especially mobile access using handheld devices. Does that mean there is a "mobile broadband digital divide?" Hardly. The same percentage of European-descended Americans have mobile phones.

Sometimes, different segments of the consumer population will use some services, features or applications more than others. That does not necessarily mean there is a "divide" of any sort that is driven by disparate access to assets. It does mean some people find some services and applications more useful than others do.

Nearly two-thirds of African-descendedAmericans (64 percent) and Latinos (63 percent) are wireless Internet users, for example, a higher percentage than European-descended Americans. More Latinos and African Americans own mobile phones than European-descended Americans.

"Minority" Americans are significantly more likely to own a cell phone than their white counterparts (87 percent of blacks and Hispanics own a cell phone, compared with 80 percent of whites). Additionally, black and Latino cell phone owners take advantage of a much wider array of their phones’ data functions compared to white cell phone owners.

Statistical variances, in other words, are just that--variances--and not necessarily evidence of disparity of access.

Mobile Access 2010 | Pew Internet & American Life Project

60% of U.S. Adults Use Mobile Internet

About 60 percent of adult American adults are now wireless Internet users, and mobile data applications have grown more popular over the last year, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Pew defines "wireless Internet use" as going online with a laptop using a Wi-Fi connection or mobile broadband card, or using the Internet, email or instant messaging on the mobile phone.

Roughly half of all adults (47 percent) say they use a Wi-Fi connection, up from the 39 percent who did so at a similar point in 2009.

About 40 percent of adults use the mobile Internet, email or IM from a mobile device, an increase from the 32 percent of adults who did so in 2009.

Mobile Access 2010 | Pew Internet & American Life Project:

Mobile Internet Gets Used As PC Internet Does, In One Respect

In the month of April, 32 percent of mobile daily page views occurred between 7 p.m. and midnight, with the highest volume occurring at 9:00 p.m., according to an analysis by Ground Truth. If you are familiar with uage patterns for how consumers use the PC-based Internet, the results are similar, as usage starts to rise after people get home and builds until 9 p.m. or so before declining.

Ground Truth’s April census of 4.24 million Americans show that from 4 a.m. onwards, mobile Internet usage, as measured in page view consumption, climbs steadily throughout the day, with usage intensifying after 6 p.m. and peaking at 9  p.m., when 7.2 percent of all page views occurred.

Throughout the workday (9 a.m. until 5 p.m.), an average of 54 percent of Mobile Internet users browse content, with workday usage heaviest around 4 p.m.

“This data proves that mobile is, indeed, an ‘always-on’ medium,” says Evan Neufeld, Ground Truth VP. “On an average day, more than half of all Mobile Internet users are accessing the mobile Internet from the moment they wake up until they put their phone down on their bedside tables."

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80% U.S. Smartphone Penetration by End of 2012?

Is it possible 80 percent of U.S. mobile phones in use by the end of 2012 could be smartphones? The answer is "yes."

To get there, one would only have to assume that current use rates of mobile browsers are a solid indication of current smartphone use, that current rates of usage will grow at current rates of nine percent every quarter through 2011, and then will increase one percentage point faster during each quarter of 2012.


U.S. mobile users increased their use of browsers, downloaded applications and social networking at about a nine percent rate each during the first quarter of 2010, according to comScore. At that rate, by the end of 2010, 39 percent of mobile subscribers will use browsers, 38 percent will be using downloaded applications and 25 percent will be using social media.

If that rate continues throughout 2011, by the end of that year 55 percent of mobile subscribers will be using browsers, 53 percent will be using downloaded applications and 35 percent will be using social networking.

In an average month during the January through March 2010 time period, 64 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device, up 0.6 percentage points compared to the fourth quarter of 2009.

Browsers were used by 30 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers, up three percentage points over the fourth quarter of 2009. About 29 percent of mobile users downloaded applications, up three percent from the fourth quarter of 2009.

Some 19 percent of mobile users used social networking sites and blogs in the first quarter of 2010, up three percent over the fourth quarter of 2009.

So the issue is what would be different about your life or your business if 80 percent of mobile users are on smartphones by the end of 2012, and those smartphones can download at speeds between 3 Mbps and perhaps 12 Mbps, and can upload at speeds from 1 Mbps to perhaps 5 Mbps.

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Users Prefer Flat-Rate Pricing. Duh!

Mobile internet users across the United Kingdom and United States prefer flat-rate pricing, a new survey by YouGov has found. That finding should surprise nobody in the U.S. market, given the development of the whole Internet access business since AOL dropped metered billing and went to flat rate packaging.

Unsurprisingly, respondents said they would use the mobile Web more if flat rate access is available. That does not necessarily suggest consumers would reject flat-rate plans that are tiered for usage, even if any rational consumer would say they prefer a low flat rate for unlimited usage.

Smartphone users might be used to low rate, unlimited access, but users of mobile PC dongles and cards are well accustomed to the idea that usage and price are related for "buckets" of usage.

Some 4,324 consumers,18 or older, were polled as part of the study.

In the United Kingdom, 33 percent of respondents  reported that they don't use the Internet despite having access on their phone, while 25 percent of U.S. respondents with an Internet-ready phone say they do not use that feature.

The study also found that users want Web sites and services optimized for their specific mobile device, especially if it means that they could more quickly access the services they want. About 32 percent of respondents say that would increase their usage.

About 51 per cent of all respondents said they were only prepared to spend up to three minutes surfing for a specific piece of content on their phones, emphasizing the importance of navigation and usability.

About 13 percent of U.K. users, and 17 percent of U.S. respondents now access the Internet more than once a day from their phones. About 27 per cent of U.K. consumers and 28 percent of U.S. consumers surveyed now use the mobile Internet at least once a week, if not more.

Mobile Browsing Still Just 1.3% of All Browsing, But Growing Fast

Mobile browsing now accounts for 1.3 percent of all Internet browsing, according to Net Applications. That measurement was taken in December 2009, which saw double-digit increases for virtually all mobile operating systems, with an unusually high increase for Android.

The Net Applications statistics confirm that most users continue to do most of their Web browsing on PCs, but also that mobile's share has steadily increased during 2009.

Both Windows and Mac devices lost a small amount of share in December, as Android began to make its presence felt, but all major mobile operating systems posted large percentage gains. Android grew  54.8 percent, while BlackBerry grew 22.2 percent. The Apple iPhone posted a 19-percent gain while Java ME grew 15.4 percent.

While the iPhone continues to account for the largest share of mobile Web browsing, Google's Android mobile operating system was by far the largest percentage gainer in December 2009,  accounting for 0.05 percent of all Web browsing, up from 0.01 percent in February.

It does appear an inflection point has been reached, however: the adoption curve appears to be steepening.

Who Will Lead Mobile Internet Industry?

If there is one enduring theme in the information and communications technology businesses, it is that the industry's leaders in one era are displaced by new leaders in the subsequent era.

That suggests we will see a new list of industry leaders in the "mobile Internet" era that is coming.

The main thing right now is not to worry too much about where we set the boundaries of the various computing waves.

The point is that a new wave is coming. As shocking as the notion might seem, the names that lead the Internet computing wave might not be on the list of "mobile Internet computing." Nothing is foreordained, though. Just because no leader has made a transition from one era to the next does not mean contestants will not try their best and hardest to make history by managing the transition.

Mobile Internet Wave Coming: Who Wins?

If a "fifth wave" of computing is about to break, as analysts at Morgan Stanley clearly believe, the issue is who the wave's new winners and leaders will be.

The history of computing suggests that the companies that lead the prior wave do not lead the new wave.

Morgan Stanley seems to think that as social networking and mobility combine, a company such as Facebook could wind up in the "Mobile Internet Computing" leaders category.

Morgan Stanley also is high on Apple making the cut, as well. Should Apple pull that off, it would make history.