3.3 Billion Mobile Phone Subscriptions; 35% of US Tweens Own a Mobile phone
A couple of amazing stats have been released about mobile phone use. Firstly industry analyst Informa Telecoms & Media revealed recently that worldwide mobile penetration will hit 50 per cent - or around 3.3 billion subscriptions. Informa estimated that mobile networks covered 90 per cent of the global population by mid-2007. According to the Telecoms Blog, this means that some 40 per cent of the world’s inhabitants are covered by a network, but not connected - which leaves just 10 per cent with neither coverage nor connection. Tomi T Ahonen noted that this means mobile growth is accelerating, as we were at 2.7 billion subscribers at the end of 2006.
In other mobile stats, the Nielsen Company today released the findings of a study on the mobile media and cross media behavior of U.S. "tweens" (ages 8-12). It found that an estimated 35% of tweens own a mobile phone. Fellow RWW author Josh Catone noted that he first got a mobile phone at age 17. I won't reveal when I got my first mobile phone, but it's fair to say that when I was a teen mobile phones resembled bricks!
According to Nielsen, 5% of tweens access the Internet over their phone each month. While 41% of tween mobile Internet users say they do so while commuting or traveling (to school, for example), mobile content such as the Internet is also a social medium for this audience: 26% of tween mobile Internet users say they access the web while at a friend's house and 17% say they do so at social events.
So we ask again: is the Mobile Web finally set to take off? You betcha! Although if last week's poll is anything to go by, there is still a long way to go before a majority of people (in the western world at least) use their mobile phones to surf the Web - our poll indicated that over 40% rarely or never use the Mobile Web. That will surely change over the next year or so, but it's still relatively early in that adoption curve.
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Well I've been using Opera Mini on a 2 year old Nokia and have been surfing the web on mobile for close on two years now.
Why is this news? Just because the US market is being forced open by Google/OHA or because of an overpriced iPhone that all the fashion monkeys think they should have?
or maybe better marketing/PR is what was lacking
people never cease to amaze/irritate/annoy me
I have a feeling that here in the US the closest thing most teens get to the using the internet on their phone is receiving stupid FaceBook alerts through SMS. We can get as excited as we want about the mobile net but until costs come down and usability goes up nothing is going to change. Google is shaking the cages with them wanting to buy a spectrum and also by releasing Android, but it will still be a while before the wave hits.
I'm hopeful that the iPhone will help bring the concept of mobile web browsing into the mainstream. Hopefully Apple's "web app" terminology for mobile websites won't confuse matters.
Even though there are still standards battles and technical issues swirling around, the fact is that there are hundreds of useful mobile websites that exist today.