Mobile internet use up 25%

Mobile internet usage is growing eight times faster than PC-based internet according to the first set of mobile data from Nielsen Online.

The Mobile Media findings show that mobile internet traffic increased 25% from 5.8m in Q2 to 7.3m users in Q3 2008. In comparison PC-based internet only had a 3% growth from 34.3m to 35.3m.

The survey found that mobile internet is increasingly popular among young people, with 25% of mobile internet users aged 16-24, with just 12% being older than 55.

BBC News is the most popular mobile internet site, attracting 1.7m unique users in Q3. This was followed by Google, Facebook and Hotmail, highlighting the advantage of mobile when it comes to immediacy.

Mobile internet traffic also accounted for the majority of page visits to sites like BBC Weather, Sky Sports and Gmail.

People often need fast and instant access to content wherever they are, and mobile can obviously satisfy this. But the fact that weather, sports, news and email sites make up the majority of the leading mobile sites show that at the moment mobile internet is mainly about functionality and need, as opposed to the more entertainment and ecommerce-focused makeup of the leading PC-based sites.

However, the fact that so many people now access the web through their phone shows that mobile internet is fast becoming a viable opportunity for advertisers and publishers to reach important demographic groups.