With smartphones increasingly becoming popular, more and more Americans are using their mobile devices to surf the Web. According to a new study from Nielsen, the mobile Internet usage in the US has surged by 34% year-over-year, with teenagers, women and elders outpacing other groups in growth.Based on the report, the number of mobile Web users has jumped from 42.5 million in July 2008 to 56.9 million in July this year. Although younger males were early-adopters of the mobile Web, women are also embracing the technology. The figures show that female visitors were up by 43 percent from last year, surpassing the 26 percent growth seen among men. Ladies now make up 47 percent of the total mobile Web audience and the 6 percent gap is narrowing at a rapid pace.
According to Nielsen, the websites men visited most were technology, sports and game sites, such as NBA, CBS, CNET and Gizmodo. Women, on the contrary, tended to browse websites for online shopping and social networking, like Facebook, MySpace and Target.
Broken down by demographics, the year-over-year growth also shows some surprising findings. Web surfing by cell phone users aged 65 or over has boosted by 67 percent from last year, though they still only account for 3 percent of the total usage. Youth aged 13 to 17 also belongs to the fast-growing group, showing a 45 percent jump in mobile Internet usage for the past year.
Still, teenagers prefer messaging when it comes to mobile media usage. In the second quarter of 2009, the top-ranked mobile activity was messaging, with 84 percent of them sending a text message and 55 percent sending a picture message.
Driven by the prevalence of smartphones like iPhone and BlackBerry, which are equipped with large screens and high-speed 3G, it is very likely that mobile Internet usage will continue to rise and become a mainstream.
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