The BBC have an article about internet usage in the UK and that 2008 is seeing rapid growth in usage (25%) from Q2 to Q3. This growth seems very high between quarters (perhaps there is some seasonal adjustment needed) but taken on face value this is amazing especially when compared with the 3% growth of PC internet usage. This means that mobile internet users are now 20% of the size of PC based internet users - although there is no direct correlation between groups lets say this means that 1 in 5 internet users are now also using their mobile phones to access the internet - impressive! The actual report from Nielsen Online can be found here (a PDF).
The mobile internet is also shown to have a bias towards younger audiences (15-24) as this graphic from the report shows:
Nielsen Online Audience Composition
Source: Nielsen Online, Q3 2008. E.g. 16% of Britons aged 15+ active on PC-based Internet are aged 15-24 years old
It would be interesting to see if the percentage of PC-based internet usage by 15-24 years is also changing (ie reducing) - but there is no indication in the report.
The article mentions the sites most visited by mobile users (Google, BBC, facebook and email) - no surprises there.
It is a shame there are no details of devices within the report - so we don’t know how much the increase of 25% can be attributed to the iPhone.
Ofcom report
I recently looked through the details of the 2008 annual Ofcom report about the changes that they have seen in user consumption of media.
The Communications Market Report is huge and it can take a while to find the interesting bits (hint the most interesting bits are in the second PDF).
On page 345 there is a break down of children’s access and usage of both internet and mobile phones:
Ofcom Childrens Mobile Phone Usage
Source: Ofcom research, fieldwork carried out by Saville Rossiter-Base in April to May 2008 Base: Children aged 5-15 (132 Boys aged 5-7, 150 Girls aged 5-7, 189 Boys aged 8-11, 178 Girls aged 8-11, 187 Boys aged 12-15, 189 Girls aged 12-15)
The graph has a few too many colours for my liking but in the 12-15 age range you can see that access and ownership is highly skewed towards mobile phones.
In the right hand part of the graph we can see that there is a significant difference between boys and girls (again only looking at 12-15) in their daily usage of internet and mobile phones. Girls use their mobile phones more than the internet (+13%) but boys use the internet more but the difference is not as big (+5%).
The report states that across the UK population only 5% use their phones to access the internet (the studies were carried out in April before the 25% increase reported by Nielson ;-D) but this is 8% for 12-15 year olds:
Ofcom Childrens Internet & Mobile Phone Usage
Source: Ofcom research, fieldwork carried out by Saville Rossiter-Base in April to May 2008 Note: Yellow arrows indicate statistically significant differences from Q2 2007. Base: Children aged 8-15 with their own mobile phone (213 aged 8-11, 347 aged 12-15). NB Base too small for 5-7 year olds