The flood of press releases from MWC has slowed to a trickle as the show winds down. This has given me a chance to catch up with another flood, the one of mobile statistics released at the show over the last three days.
The most interesting numbers come from mobile advertising network BuzzCity which conducted a survey (PDF) of visitors to the mobile sites of its 2000 publisher partners. The survey was actually conducted ON the mobile web which is pretty cool in itself. 3400 users in 15 countries participated.
The most eyebrow raising data from the BuzzCity report is that 70% of mobile web use occurs at home, compared with11% at work and less than 6% outdoors or while on public transportation. I initially found this hard to believe but it actually makes sense partly given BuzzCity's demographics and the way the survey was conducted but also because it probably is true.
Source: Buzzcity.com
BuzzCity is based in Singapore and its advertising platform primarily targets users in Asia, Africa and the US. The 15 countries represented in the survey were; Brunei, Egypt, Indonesia, India, Kenya, Libya, Nigeria, Philippines, Pakistan, Romania, Thailand, United States and South Africa. Except for the US, these all emerging economies where PC usage is relative low. Only 7% of the survey respondents were from the US.
BuzzCity's core business is actually the mygamma.com mobile social network. The company says mygamma's core demographic is "the unwired", which it defines as "...the newly connected emerging middle class in developing
markets and the blue collar sector in developed regions." The BuzzCity study was conducted on publisher sites across the advertising network in addition to on BuzzCity itself. However the incentive for users to participate in the survey was that they received "Gamma Dollars", mygamma's virtual currency, as a reward. So I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of survey participants were mygamma users.
It's easy to jump to the conclusion that the high rate of mobile web use at home is because most of the survey respondents don't have home computers. But that would be wrong, as even in the US, where 82% households do have PC Internet, survey respondents reported that 84% of their mobile web usage occurred at home!
Even if you factor in that over half the US respondents earned less than $2000/month and are thus less likely to have a home PC, it's obvious that there is a lot of mobile surfing is going on in homes where there ARE internet connected PCs available. And when you think about it, that's not surprising. The mobile is something the user always has with them and it's always turned on and ready to surf. I have several PCs to choose from at home and yet I frequently use the web on the phone to do things like check Twitter, Bloglines, news headlines and this blog's comment moderation queue in bed or during the commercial breaks of TV programs. I almost always check the weather forecast using my phone because it's faster and easier than with a PC. As phone screens get bigger, mobile browsers become more capable and easier to use and mobile network speeds increase, we will see more and more web use moving to mobiles. If the web experience is good with the device that is always with you why use anything else?
The BuzzCity report is 75 pages long and packed with statistics and charts with the data broken down by country. It's fascinating reading for anyone with an interest in the state of mobile browsing particularly in emerging economies. Here are few highlights:
There's also a lot of demographic information (gleaned from the participant's mygamma profiles) included in the study. Most survey respondents are in their 20's and 60% have some education beyond secondary school at a
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posted by Dennis Bournique
February 18, 2009 @ 9:47 pm
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