Only 12-13 percent of U.S. mobile users surf the Web on their phones
By Dusan Belic on Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 at 3:31 AM PST In Research
Apparently, mobile phone users in the U.S. aren’t that eager to browse the Web from their mobile phones. According to Rethink Research, mobile web accounts for 12% of ARPU in 2007, far bellow the expected 50 percent. On the the other hand, Yankee Group argues only 13% of mobile phone users in North America use their phones to surf the Web, quoting bad phones, network speeds and crappy WAP browsers as reasons.
But carriers aren’t crying. Instead of pushing mobile web, they make their cut by selling 3G cards alongside the mobile data plans. Starting from 2005 to first three quarters of 2007, mobile operators saw their mobile data revenues jumping from $8.6 billion to $17.7 billion.
Of course, following the introduction of Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iPhone things have changed a bit. The idea of having the full web browser in a pocket seems to appeal to Americans, hence we may see more such devices introduced during the next year. Can’t wait…
[Via: GigaOm]
You have got to give it to Apple for making web-browsing a decent experience on a mobile device. I think as more and more companies optimize mobiles for web-browsing, this numer will certainly go up. However, it is most likely that mobile browsing will never be a huge thing (in the states at least) because most people simply do not want to view web pages on a small screen. Email?.. yes. Check the weather?..yes. Maybe see what time a movie is playing?..sure why not. Browse a favorite web page?..eh, I’ll just wait until I get home -
That’s really interesting, as most of the mobile content market rests in USA