Turning to mobile search
Whilst the stats in this article about mobile local search are centred on America, it still sums up our own thinking about how the UK market will develop.
“Given the continuing growth in the smartphone market, mobile phones are poised to become the first source people turn to when searching for local business information.”
The article reports that;
“two-thirds (64%) of Americans say they generally turn to online resources for local search, while 33% turn to print, and 3% go to their phones. However, mobile phone users outnumber computer users by 39 million [and] the market for mobile search is growing faster than expected.”
The increasing popularity of mobile internet is backed up by the latest stats in the UK too.
“From Q2 to Q3 2008, the number of Britons using mobile Internet increased by 25% (from 5.8 to 7.3 million) compared to 3% for PC-based Internet (34.3 to 35.3 million Britons)” [Nielsen Online]
The Nielsen Online article also goes on to outline which websites perform well on mobile internet, as well as giving the usual demographic breakdown. We still think user experience will shape the popularity of mobile internet - at the moment, it’s often frustrating compared to PC-based searching - but with improvements emerging on an almost daily basis, surely it will only be a matter of time?
Tags: Mobile Search