14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that more and more mobile phone owners tend to use their devices to navigate on the Internet these days. According to a study recently published by the analytics firm comScore, in January 2009 the number of users that accessed news and information daily on their mobile phones in the US was 22.4 million, double the 10.8 million registered back in January 2008.
The firm also unveiled some details on the information-consumption habits of users in the United States, showing that the second most spread activity among consumers was social networking, as around 9.3 million mobile users tend to access such sites every day, but those who access blogs were also included in this number.
The data unveiled by comScore shows that social networking is only half as popular as reading news, yet it seems that it registers a growth rate four times higher than the latter. A year ago, only 1.8 million users were reported to perform social networking activities from their mobile phones.
According to the study, around 63 million people used their handsets to access news and information at least once in said month. At the same time, it seems that about a third of the users accessed the news through a downloaded application and not directly via their phone's web browser. In addition, it seems that the most popular app downloaded during the time frame was maps. According to the research, 14.1 million people made SMS-based searches, showing that this activity was even more popular than downloading maps, performed by 8.2 million users.
“Over the course of the past year, we have seen use of mobile Internet evolve from an occasional activity to being a daily part of people's lives,” observed Mark Donovan, senior vice president, mobile, comScore. “This underscores the growing importance of the mobile medium as consumers become more reliant on their mobile devices to access time-sensitive and utilitarian information.”