The Face of The Web
According To Ipsos insight’s latest The Face of the Web Study, mobile phones are poised to overtake The PC as the dominate Internet platform in some markets.
"Globally, just over one-fourth (28%) of mobile phone owners worldwide have browsed the Internet on a wireless handset, up slightly from 25% at the end 2004. Interestingly, growth in this behavior for 2005 was driven by the older users (age 35+), indicating that surfing the Internet on a mobile phone is emerging as a mainstream activity, no longer dominated by the traditional early adopter segment – young males – typical of many new consumer technologies."
The results of this study follow on from similar findings of previous Nokia and Telephia studies.
So what are people doing on the mobile web? On the MEX blog, Marek Pawlowski, comments on the work of two research students working with Google. Maryam Kamvar of Columbia University and Shumeet Baluja of Carnegie Mellon University have written a paper on users’ mobile search behaviour. People seem to be doing single queries for specific content, in many cases, for adult content.
Why adult content? Well, phones provide a very private personal space where there’s less chance of other people knowing what you are doing.
Where are the opportunities? Making the most of the private personal space may be the key. According to Ipsos…
"We think the high correlation between Internet users and mobile phone ownership suggests an opportunity for wireless services or applications that can link aspects of personalization across multiple Internet platforms"
This is precisely what Google and Yahoo are doing.
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