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UK mobile web use grows by 50 per cent

State of the Mobile Web report by Opera outlines the latest trends to hit the on-the-move internet market.

By Maggie Holland, 27 May 2009 at 10:00

Users’ hunger for the mobile web shows no sign of abating just yet, with page views shooting up by more than 100 per cent since April last year.

So claims the latest State of the Mobile Web report by Opera, which claims page views have grown by 113.6 per cent during the period, with unique user numbers also shooting up by 48.1 per cent.

In the UK, Google is still the most visited website, by unique user volumes, according to the study, followed by Facebook, Yahoo, BBC, live.com, Wikipedia, Bebo, YouTube, Hotmail and then my.opera.com in 10th place.

Our US counterparts are also pretty hungry when it comes to data consumption, viewing more data intensive pages that any other country. According to the report, the average page view over a US network is 32KB when compressed and around 320 KB when uncompressed.

Users in the Ukraine are also making networks smile by viewing, on average, 528 pages per month.

Opera Mini is also growing in popularity with more than 23.4 million users today – an increase of 140 per cent since April last year.

In April alone, users of this browser generated more than 151 million MB of data, according to Opera.

"Our relentless focus on delivering the best possible mobile web experience helps drive adoption of mobile data plans,” said Jon von Tetzchner, Opera’s chief executive, in a statement. “We believe that Opera Mini is the perfect win-win solution for both operators and consumers alike."

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The Mobile Internet is getting there, but ...

In terms of a complete mobile service we are getting their with the network infrastructure and devices, but the cost and content still require focus. 3G networks already having 87% coverage in the UK and being available in a further 218 countries around the world there is a already a good network foundation for consumers. It's also estimated that almost three-quarters of mobile users (72 per cent) have internet capabilities on their mobile. Figures from the Mobile Data Association reveal that over 16 million people in the UK accessed the Internet from their mobile phone during May 2008. However, another survey performed around the same time showed that 7 out of 10 mobile phone users didn't know how much they were charged for using mobile data services (internet, email, etc) on their mobile phones. [Self promoting plug follows ...] I've created the site http://www.mobilemeg.com/ with details for over 200 tariffs currently in use in the UK. There is a one-page comparison estimating the cost of using each of these tariffs. Based on an average use of 1MB of data/day for 30 days - the range is from £6.00/month to a whopping £210/month for exactly the same data use ! [Self promoting plug ends.] As mentioned in the article, the move to providing a personal and relevant mobile content is being led by the big players such as the Google, Facebook, Yahoo and the BBC. But there is also a more widespread acknowledgement amongst the designers and developers providing content services across all industries that mobile content is not just a small-screen version of existing web sites as can be seen http://www.slideshare.net/johnep/an-internet-watered-down-or-how-to-save-the-mobile-web. With over 3.5 Billion mobile phones in use around the world mobile data is the next Internet and it is already here. The device manufacturers, network operators and content providers all have a big challenge ahead to ensure their services continue to perform and grow to meet these increasing demands.

By peter144 on Wednesday May 27