The number of mobile Internet users worldwide increased two folds between January 2008 and January 2009 with rising popularity of social networking sites and hi-tech mobile applications.
According to a new report released by ComScore, the number of people accessing Web on their mobile handsets doubled between January 2008 and January 2009, as reported by InformaitonWeek.
The report further reveals that nearly 63.2 Million people worldwide accessed Internet on mobile handset to read news and gather information in January 2009. The number of mobile Internet subscribers in the US mounted to 22.4 Million in January 2009 from 10.8 Million in January 2008. Social networking websites and blogs witnessed the fastest growth at 407% rise in daily access among mobile Internet users. However, reading news and accessing information such as directions and maps continued to be the most popular content with nearly 22.4 Million daily users. Moreover, the integration of new mobile applications has been increasingly encouraging people to adopt mobile Internet, resulting in 22.3 Million users accessing information and news via mobile application.
The stupendous growth in the global mobile Internet services is accredited to attractive online content, improvement in mobile data networks and Web friendly hardware. Internet-enabled devices such as BlackBerry Storm, iPhone 3G, T-Mobile G1 and Samsung Instinct have also played critical role in the propagation of mobile Internet usage. Although Smartphones are extensively popular for accessing Web, ComScore has discovered that a large number of people use Web featured phones to access Internet.
Furthermore, rising popularity of social networking websites among mobile Internet users is also contributing to the penetration of mobile broadband. With the perfection of many media properties’ mobile websites, such as Google and CNN, the number of mobile Internet users is rising and even encouraging those people who don’t have smartphones to start using mobile Internet.
Rising number of mobile Internet users and bright growth prospects in future indicates that the mobile marketing is recession-proof. In addition, the advertising industry will see complete change in its growth outlook with the expansion of mobile marketing.
According to a Research Analyst at RNCOS, “With rising popularity of Internet and the benefits it offers, the mobile Internet usage is increasing at a rapid pace across the world. The upward trend is likely to be continued in future with the decline in prices of handsets and demand for complex application attracting people towards technically advanced handsets.”
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