U.K. mobile Internet users spend 2.2 billion minutes on Facebook in one month

Facebook is a clear favorite when it comes to time spent on sites accessed via mobile phones in the U.K. According to new data from the GSM Association time spent accessing the social network via mobile accounted for nearly 40% of the near 5 billion minutes spent on the mobile web in December, 2009.

by Helen Leggatt

Sixteen million people in the U.K. accessed the Internet from their mobile phones in December last year, racking up 4.8 billion minutes (60 million hours) and viewing 6.7 billion pages.

The GSMA's recent data showed that mobile users in the U.K. spent around 2.2 billion of those minutes browsing Facebook, substantially more than the next contender, Google sites, with which people spent 395 million minutes.

Where the mobile minutes are spent:

Facebook - 2.2 billion
Google sites - 395 million
Microsoft sites - 165 million
Orange sites - 138 million
AOL (inc. Bebo) - 106 million
Apple - 104 million
Vodafone - 89 million
BBC sites - 83 million
Flirtomatic - 54 million
Yahoo sites - 48 million

The above top 10 sites accounted for 70 % of both total pages viewed and total time spent online on mobiles during the month.

While smartphone users represent just 29% of the U.K. total mobile Internet audience, they accounted for 47% of total page views, and 51% of the total time spent online in December.

Tags: mobile Internet, mobile phone, mobile web, research, smartphone, social network, U.K.