US Mobile Web Use Surges Ahead, Increasing 3-Fold over the Last Year

The UK based mobile billing company, Bango has published statistics which confirm that the United States is at the forefront of mobile web growth with a three fold increase in usage over the last year, taking it to second position behind the UK. The increasing popularity of mobile search as a way of finding new content and services is fueling this rapid rise in mobile web usage.

By working as a "global exchange" for the mobile web, Bango is able to provide an insight into where mobile users are coming from and what handsets they are using. The Bango platform detects users from more than 190 countries accessing the mobile web.

According to Bango data, the top five countries accessing the mobile web via Bango in April 2007 are the UK at 27%, the US at 21%, South Africa at 11%, India at 9% and Indonesia at 3%.

In the first quarter of 2007 the top handset was the Sanyo Katana SCP 6600. The fact that the Sanyo Katana is only available in the United States reflects the rapid growth in mobile surfing by US mobile users. Other popular handsets included the Motorola V360, the Sony Ericsson K750i and the Samsung A900.

"We see that wherever flat-rate data charges are pervasive in a country then there's much more web browsing," said Anil Malhotra, SVP of Marketing at Bango. "We expect to see more competitively priced flat-rate data plans in the US which will stimulate further web browsing."

Bango also has detected a rapid increase in the number of mobile surfers coming from India. Now 9% of all accesses to mobile websites are from India, up from 4% a year ago. India, with a population of just over 1,000 million and lack of an established fixed phone line network, relies on mobile phones to stay in touch. Here, mobile web usage is set to exceed European levels within the next few years.

"What we're seeing through these numbers is a transformation of the internet from something connected to a desktop to something mobile," said Malhotra. "With the advent of mobile search that transformation is happening on a truly global scale."