29% of US mobile subscribers go online via their handsets
Almost 29% of US mobile subscribers went online via their mobile phones in an average month during the November to January 2009 period, according to new research from comScore.
The research also found that 63.5% of US mobile subscribers sent text messages, up 1.5 percentage points versus three months prior, while subscribers who played games made up 21.7% (up 0.4 percentage points).
Access of social networking sites or blogs grew 3.3 percentage points to 17.1% of US mobile subscribers.
Smartphones are becoming ever more popular, with 42.7 million people in the US now owning one, up 18% from the previous three months.
Mobile internet use is also on the increase in Europe, with a report from the European Interactive Advertising Association revealing that 71 million Europeans browse the mobile internet in a typical week, with an average 6.4 hours a week spent on the mobile internet compared with 4.8 hours reading newspapers and 4.1 hours reading magazines.
The growth is mostly being driven by young early adopters, said the EIAA, with almost a quarter (24%) of 16-24 year olds and 21% of 25-34 year olds already using the mobile internet, spending 7.2 and 6.6 hours on it respectively each week.
And a report from Deloitte found that around one in five UK consumers now owns a smartphone, which rank fourth among owners in terms of the product they value most.