Ah, technology – what a wonderful thing! It brought us the mobile phone and the Internet. I would not be able to live without either (and neither would you… admit it). Now, technology has combined the benefits of both. Surfing the net via a mobile phone is becoming more popular according to various studies. This Friday Fact Box takes a look at the people accessing the Internet via their mobile phones and what particular phone models they find the most popular to do so with.

From WapReview – MWC09: A Flood of Mobile Statistics (Feb 2009)

• The total number of mobile Internet users: 1.05 billion, which in 2008 for the first time surpassed the total number of PC Web users (1 billion).

From Marketing Fox - Mobile Phones Beat PCs for Young Women (2009)

• The mobile phone appears to be displacing the PC among US women in terms of usage - especially in the 12-24 age group, according to research from SRG, which found young women spend twice as much time with their cell phones as women.
• The "Women and Digital Life" study, revealed that more than 80% of US women now use a wireless device and 17% are using a smartphone, such as an iPhone, BlackBerry or models from HTC, Samsung, LG or similar, reports MarketingCharts.
• Among those in the 12-24 and 25-39 age groups, smartphone ownership is now 23%. In contrast 11% of women ages 40+ own a smartphone.

NEW HANDSETS SELL 1.15B PER YEAR, 15% WERE SMARTPHONES

• The industry sold 1.15 billion new mobile phones in 2008 and of those, 15% were smartphones.
• Out of the total installed base of all mobile phones in use today, 100% can do basic data on SMS, 92% have a basic browser, 90% have a colour screen, 71% can do MMS "picture messaging" and 63% are camera phones.
• Smartphones account for only 13% of the total installed base so far but many more phones have some advanced abilities such as removable memory card slots, are Java/BREW capable and have bluetooth.

From DigitalStats - 70% of Japanese Social Network Users Access Most Often from a Mobile Phone (June 2009)

When posed with the question "Which do you access Social Network Sites from more, mobile phone or computer?”
(Sample size=321)

• Computer 14.0%
• Mobile phone 70.4%
• Both about the same 15.0%
• Don’t know 0.6%

From DigitalStats - 38.8% of Chinese Internet Users Access the Internet from Mobile Phones (April 2009)

• 38.8% of Chinese internet users access the internet from mobile phones.
• This is compared to 88.4% from desktop machines and 27.8% from laptops.

From DigitalStats – Mobile Uploads to YouTube have increased by 400% per day since the launch of the iPhone 3G S (June 2009)

• In the last six months, uploads from mobile phones to YouTube jump by 1700%.
• When the iPhone 3GS came out, uploads increased by 400% a day.

From DigitalStats - Facebook has >30m Regular Users via Mobile Phone (April 2009)

• There are more than 30 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
• People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are almost 50% more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
• There are more than 150 mobile operators in 50 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products.
• Source: Facebook Press Statistics, retrieved on 9th April 2009.

This shows rapid growth from 21m mobile users in January 2009, and 15m in November 2008

From Local Mobile Search - Study: 40% of iPhone Users Online via Mobile More Than PC (2009)

• 40% of those users are going online more often on mobile devices than through a PC.