Three-Fold Mobile Web Use in US in Last 12 Months

[Pete Paxton]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.webitpr.com/release_detail.asp?ReleaseID=5951' target='_blank'>http://www.webitpr.com/release_detail.asp?ReleaseID=5951</a><br /><br /></div><i>"June 5, 2007 – Bango today published statistics which confirm that the United States is at the forefront of a mobile web growth with a three fold increase in usage over the last year. This rapid rise, taking the US to second position behind the UK, is being fuelled by the increasing popularity of mobile search as a way of finding new content and services. By working as a “global exchange” for the mobile web, Bango is able to provide a unique insight into where users are coming from world-wide and what handsets they are using. The top five countries accessing the mobile web via Bango* in April 2007 were the UK at 27%, the US at 21%, South Africa at 11%, India at 9% and Indonesia at 3%. In total, Bango detects mobile web users from over 190 countries."</i><br /><br />So according to Bango (a site that keeps stats on mobile web usage), the US is number two in the world in mobile web usage behind the UK. Not bad out of 190 countries detected. I surf the web quite often from my Dash. In fact I don't even bring my laptop to bed anymore (that's sounds more strange than it is) but instead I bring my Dash. I have many PIE friendly sites bookmarked and with WiFi I am able to surf quickly. Do you find yourself surfing on your mobile device more and less on your desktop/laptop or is surfing from a handheld device too awkward?

[Mark Larson]

The amount of usage is proportional to the price. When you offer the Internet for free or very cheap (Sprint and T-Mobile, although T-Mobile wants Smartphone users to pay $30) you get a lot more folks wanting to try it out and keep using it than if you charge an arm and a leg, like Verizon or at&amp;t.

Also the usage depends on the number of apps. For example, google maps is invaluable on the road, next only to a proper dash-mounted GPS. The rest, like being able to surf engadget on my phone, is just luxury. But with google maps and gmail, and other mobile-friendly essential services, one can make a case for having the internet on anyone's phone.

I'm sure that if data prices keep going down and phones become more and mroe capable, the viral effect will come into play and we will see a lot more people using the Internet on their phones, overtaking the UK easily.

[chucky.egg]

Don't forget that in the UK we've only very recently got access to unmetered data services (and even now only from one supplier - T-Mobile).

The other networks still charge comparatively high charges:
Vodafone = 120Mb for £8/month ($12+ I think)
Orange = 30Mb for £8/month
O2 = 4Mb for £5/month

The Vodafone deal is new, but so is the Orange one, so clearly the networks here don't want to follow T-Mobile's lead... whether they have to in the end, because of loss of customers, remains to be seen.

Different markets put the emphasis on different services, so here I would expect email to be the driver behind getting cheaper tariffs. Getting more advanced business services (like fleet tracking and job allocation) will come once people start to learn how the underlying technology can be put to use.

[applejosh]

I don't surf the web on my handheld devices all that much. Most of the sites are still too "flashy" to look good on the small screen. I have a couple of sites (plus RSS feeds) that I peruse, but for the most part, I just fire up the laptop. It's kind of funny that once broadband and higher resolution monitors became prevelant, the trend was to create large, ornate webpages that looked crappy on "older" computers. Now we're going in reverse and want quick, small pages that render on small screens we can carry everywhere with us. :roll:

That said, if Verizon finally offered cheaper unlimited (and really unlimited like Sprint), I'd get a new device tomorrow. As it stands, I'm kind of using my work phone (from Sprint), but I'm not really doing any heavy duty surfing, etc., because I don't know what kind of usage policy my company has for these things.

[modgnik]

My habits are similar, primarily surfing the web via WiFi at home on my imate SP5 in bed. I wont pay for WiFi when I'm 'out and about' and in my neck of the woods (S Africa) free Hotspots are virtually non existent.
Fortunately however, GPRS data here is quite cheap. PAYG data only costs usa 7c/mb for Edge and 28c/mb for 3G/HSDPA.
Having said that, I dont think many people here use their phones to access the internet. SA may be 3rd in the rankings but that is driven by people using their laptops via HSDPA. They get reasonably priced 'data card' contract deals from the networks for large data bundles. (1-5gb)

[rych26]

I'm surpised with all the high power smartphone users here to see folks reply that they don't use the internet much.

I'm more or less a "commoner" but use my phone on the internet a lot...for admittedly mundane reasons. I check my email frequently, deleting spam and reading short messages or important ones, saving long ones and long replies for later. I check forums like this one, check the weather radar, sports scores, local news, and use it to look up answers to trivial arguments. I have used it to look up driving directions,but not often since I have a Garmin GPS in my car. I love having internet access on my phone.

Stu

[ebrandwein]

Lately, I use my old PPC4100 with a WiFi card around the house all the time. With the kids hogging up the computer, it makes checking e-mail at least possible. It isn't the same as using a full desktop browser but it works well enough. I don't use a carrier supplied data plan however. Those are still too expensive for my tastes and there is plenty of free wifi here in NYC to tide me over.

[rych26]

You'd think some of y'all who get the newest phone every couple of months could afford a carrier data plan. :-)

Stu

[midtoad]

Internet access by cellphone is just not worth it. Browsing internet sites with a PDA screen is an exercise in frustration and inconvenience (I expect that even on the iPhone it'll get tiring once the novelty of flicking your fingers to zoom in on tiny little text wears off). Typing up this reply would be laborious. And the carriers are rapacious in their rates.

If I use pay-as-you-go on Fido or Rogers here in Canada, it's $0.03/kb. That rate sounds cheap (good work, cell service marketers) until you realise it's actually $30/MB. I made the mistake of testing my connection recently and loaded up a single page with a few images on it. 655 kb of usage came to $20! I terminated my internet access the day I got my bill and I won't use it again.

At home my internet usage amounts to about 1 GB per month. My ISP charges me about $40/month, so that works out to 1/1000th the price for the same amount of data used wirelessly. If I used my cellphone for that 1 GB of data I'd now have a cell phone bill of $30,000! If banks tried this, they'd be up in court on charges of usury. So how can cellphone companies get away with it?

[qyv42]

I have 33 mobile-optimized sites that I created a simple HTML "homepage" for on my Dash (which I'm typing this on now, btw). 'Thoughts, CNet, Engadget, MSNBC and Yahoo news, Newsweek and Washington Post, Variety, SciFi Channel - and of course Wikipedia, Live Search and Google...I've got plenty to keep me surfing when at home. My Dash is always in my pocket, so I find myself using it rather than browsing on the PC upstairs unless there's a really huge site I need, as WiFi means a mobile page loads super-quick. To each his own, but I find mobile web surfing to be something I do all the time!

[modgnik]

Your reaction is quite understandable after being ripped off like that by your greedy and shortsighted Telco. I was also screwed for $500 the first time I ventured onto the net via a phone. I was so incensed I researched and discovered Voip. Now I browse the net via Edge GPRS @ euro 0.05c/mb, send worldwide sms for 0.01c, call over 50 countries' landlines from S Africa for 0.08c/min (in the UK it's 0.05c and USA/Canada it's the cost of an incoming call). This can be done via any GPRS capable phone with Java and on PAYG!
The upshot of all this is my Telco bills are now greatly reduced.

[SteveHoward999]

Don't forget that in the UK we've only very recently got access to unmetered data services (and even now only from one supplier - T-Mobile).

The other networks still charge comparatively high charges:
Vodafone = 120Mb for £8/month ($12+ I think)
Orange = 30Mb for £8/month

Dollar/pound conversion is near-as-dammit 2 to 1, so $16 for 120 Mb.

Are you sure unmetered is so new? I left the UK 3 years ago, and I'm sure I was using unmetered GPRS from T-Mobile for a couple of years before then .... My memory could be failing me though :-)

[SteveHoward999]

Internet access by cellphone is just not worth it. Browsing internet sites with a PDA screen is an exercise in frustration and inconvenience (I expect that even on the iPhone it'll get tiring once the novelty of flicking your fingers to zoom in on tiny little text wears off). Typing up this reply would be laborious. And the carriers are rapacious in their rates.

On a VGA PDA web surfing is fine. The extra screen size makes a huge difference.

My Nokia E62 has the Nokia Web Browser and it is waaaay better to use than any PocketPC browser version I've used so far. My only complaint is the relatively slow download time on mobile devices. The convenience is way worth it. My laptop is way too big to carry all the time :-)

[snowman5373]

The main reason I purchased my T-Mobile Dash is so that I can surf the net. Work is very slow and the company I work for has all the good sites blocked. If the new IE did not have so many memory leaks it would be great. I currently use the Opera beta 8.65 (?) and that works great. I just pay for the Edge service, this way anywhere at anytime I can surf the net or text. Believe it or not this has come in very useful at times. If Tmobile does not upgrade in the next year to at least 3G then I will be switching to Cingular.