Nielsen also released some numbers on mobile search along with the totals above. It appears that in the UK the mobile Web is growing much faster than the PC Web by a factor of eight. Not surprisingly (judging by my daughters!) the average age of mobile users is younger than your typical online user.
There are approximately 7 million mobile Web users in the UK according to Nielsen. That compares with more than 40 million in the USA. The mobile Web is approximately 20 percent of the UK online audience. In the US, where the raw numbers are much larger in both categories, the proportion is roughly the same — the mobile Web audience is approximately 22 percent of the total online audience.
A couple of interesting figures from Nielsen
From Q2 to Q3 2008, the number of Britons using mobile Web increased by 25% (from 5.8 to 7.3 million) compared to 3% for PC-based Web (34.3 to 35.3 million Britons)
The mobile Web audience has a higher concentration of younger users than PC-based Web; 25% of mobile Web consumers are aged 15-24 compared to 16% for PC-based consumers. Whilst 23% of the PC-based Web population is 55+ they only comprise 12% of the mobile Web audience.
The growth for the online Web market in the UK was 3% whereas the mobile market grew 25%. BBC Weather, Sky sports and Gmail actually have greater usage in mobile. According to Nielsen “Whilst Google Search is the most popular PC-based Internet site, on mobile Internet BBC News is the most popular, being visited by 24% of British mobile Internet consumers (1.7 million people).”
It would seem that the UK mobile users don’t proportionately search as much on their mobiles as they do online but I suspect this may change.
