Nielsen: US leads in mobile web adoption

If you are considering advertising on the mobile web, you may want to focus on American consumers - at least for now. This, according to a new report from Nielsen//Netratings, which indicates that US consumers are adopting the mobile web at a much higher rate than consumers elsewhere in the world.

by Kristina Knight

The study, Critical Mass: The Worldwide State of the Mobile Web, found that there are 40 million mobile subscribers in the US. That is roughly 15% of the mobile population and enough for researchers to say that mobile adoption has reached critical mass in the US. The UK (12% penetration) and Italy (11% penetration) were the closest competitors.

“With highly capable devices, improving network speeds and millions of mobile users visiting individual websites over their phones, we believe mobile Internet reached a critical mass for mobile marketing this year,” said Nic Covey, author of the Nielsen report. “A confluence of factors will only further ignite this market, rapidly, this year and into 2009.”

About 14% of mobile subscribers in the US access the web via an unlimited access plan; about half of all subscribers say unlimited plans are preferable to other mobile plans. 3G networks are most likely to have fully satisfied consumers because of the speed and accessibility of their platforms. The study further found that a full quarter of mobile users view ads while surfing the mobile web.

Leading the destination points for mobile users in the US are Yahoo Mail (14 million users), Google Search (9 million users) and Weather Channel (8.6 million users).