Smartphone social networking and gaming see US growth
New research from Compete has found that increasing numbers of US consumers are using their smartphones for social networking and gaming.
According to its findings, 33% of smartphone Twitter users primarily send tweets via their smartphones, and 33% of these consumers prefer to read tweets on their phone.
Of those accessing Facebook from their smartphone, consumers are increasingly using the device to read news feeds (66%), post status updates (60%), read/reply to private messages (59%) and post photos (44%).
Danielle Nohe, director, technology and entertainment for Compete, said: “Given the increasing popularity of Facebook, Twitter and other social sites, it follows that users are eager to access these outlets on their phones.
“Based on our findings, I recommend marketers start thinking about new ways to maximize consumers’ use of smartphones on social sites, as mobile adoption will likely only increase with time.”
Mobile gaming is most popular with iPhone users, Compete found, with 51% of them having five or more games loaded on their smartphones. In contrast, 46% of BlackBerry users have no games on their devices.
Of the consumers surveyed, 37% of iPhone users report playing games on their smartphones at least daily and puzzle games seem to be capturing the majority of this attention.
According to a recent forecast from Initiative, there will be 1.82 billion internet-enabled phones in use by 2013, making it the most commonly used device to go online from.
comScore research, meanwhile, shows that the UK smartphone market has grown 70% over the past year to more than 11 million subscribers.