Garrett French at Search Engine Lowdown cites and elaborates upon (including offering some Local musings) the results of a new piece of Ipsos research about mobile Internet adoption and usage globally. The release argues that mobile Internet adoption is rapidly becoming a mainstream phenomenon around the world and could shortly rival the PC.
That behavior includes US users, according to Ipsos, with 26% of mobile users "browsing the Internet for news and information" in 2005. Forrester, by contrast, says that 15% of US users accessed Internet in 2005 (vs. 6% in 2004).
Ipsos: % who browsed Internet in 2005 for news and information:
| Japan | 40% |
| U.K. | 29% |
| USA | 26% |
| South Korea | 26% |
| Canada | 19% |
| Germany | 18% |
| France | 18% |
| Mexico* | 16% |
| China* | 10% |
| Brazil* | 8% |
| Russia* | 7% |
| India | 5% |
* Urban sample only
I think the pace of mobile Internet development and adoption is greatly accelerating, but I think we need to be cautious about how quickly we expect things like Mobile Local (Mo-Lo) Search to develop. Mobile has many complex components, literally and figuratively. I wrote about some of the issues and questions surrounding mobile previously in this post and here's my write-up of AOL's recent mobile user survey.
