UK Mobile Internet Use Grows

By Digital Trends Staff November 25, 2008

The number of people in the UK going online from their PCs is slowing, while the figures are soaring for mobile Internet use, according to a new survey conducted by Nielsen Online.

The figure for PC users accessing the Net grew by just 3% in the second and third quarters, while for mobile users the numbers soared by 25%, for a total of 7.3 million people, according to the BBC.

The most popular sites for mobile users was BBC News, followed by BBC Weather and Sky Sports, compared to Google for desktop users.

Kent Ferguson, a senior analyst with Nielsen Online, observed:

"This highlights the advantage of mobile when it comes to immediacy: people often need fast, instant access to weather or sports news and mobile can obviously satisfy this."

"The fact that weather, sports, news and e-mail sites make up the majority of leading mobile sites shows that mobile internet is mainly about functionality and need at the moment as opposed to the more entertainment and e-commerce-focused makeup of the leading PC-based sites."

The figures show that 25% of mobile Net users are between 15 and 24. Users log on an average of seven session a month, for an average of 10 minutes per session.

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