You know all these new mobile phones and services which offer to connect your mobile phone up with the Internet and, you know, improve your quality of life? How many people do you think actually use those services?
According to mobile industry monitoring company Telephia, as of June 2006 the answer for the United States was 34.6 million (PDF). “Mobile Web usage has continued to grow over the past year, as Internet content providers continue to extend their reach into the mobile space,” said Bernard Brenner, Telephia’s Director of Mobile Content in a statement. “As the industry matures and more mobile users continue to complement and extend their Web activity via their wireless devices, Internet content providers are well-positioned to broaden their audience overall.”
According to Telephia, email and weather-related services are the two most visited categories for mobile Internet, followed by sports information, Internet search, and city maps/guides. Top sites accessed by mobile users were Yahoo Mail, the Weather Channel, ESPN, Google, Hotmail, MapQuest, AOL Mail, CNN, Yahoo Weather, and Yahoo Search. Mobile users’ use of browsing software reveled Openwave, Motorola, and Nokia have high adoption rates among users, with Openwave and Motorola commanding 27 and 24 percent of the market, respectively, with Nokia following at 13 percent. Telephia also says from 81 percent of Internet customers have phones which support xHTML-MP, meaning mobile service providers should have a strong base on which to develop more sophisticated offerings.
