Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) with their research partner Lightspeed Research have released the results of the latest Mobile Consumer Briefing reports on mobile internet usage. Even this report is about consumers in UK, France and Germany, I think that this report provides good information and guidance also outside of aforementioned countries.

Average of 28 percent of the mobile consumers are expected to access mobile internet sites at least once a week. In UK the number is even quite much higher, 36%. News, weather and social networking were, naturally, the most interesting usage areas for mobile internet use but also maps and navigation are on the radar of the mobile phone consumers.

Fast load times and simple viewing & fast navigation were reported to be key factors for the succesful mobile internet sites.

Author of the study, MMA’s VP of Market Intelligence Peter A. Johnson commented “The survey results have shown that there is a clear and growing market opportunity for the mobile internet…”. I can’t agree more with his above comment as well as following one: “…To make the most of this opportunity, site owners and developers need to ensure their websites are well-designed for mobile, user-friendly and easily discoverable using mobile search engines.” Just like from my mouth, those wise words….

And that’s not all. Gartner also predicts that by 2014 Android will challenge Symbian as leading Mobile Phone Operating System…

Well, I have been surprised how fast Android has ended up into people hands, especially this year. We have seen dramatic change in the mobile internet services and sites we do run. Last year random Android users has left their marks into sites’ log files but this year we have seen more and more people with Android phones surfing the sites we have delivered. And seems that those numbers are just increasing daily.

Interesting times we are having.. and as we do develop mobile phone applications to our clients, too, it will be interesting to see when this “I want iPhone app” will change into “I want Android app”.. and what will be overall thinking of supporting all mobile phone operating systems.. interesting times, interesting time indeed…

Forecast: Mobile Communications Device Open OS Sales to End Users by OS (Thousands of Units)

Source: Gartner (August 2010)

So Gartner’s report says. Also, already last year eMarketer estimated that every third person in USA will access internet via their mobile devices by the end of this year. There’s nice snapshot of different kind of mobile related statistics available at econsultancy.com’s site. And oh, even ITU (International Telecommunications Union) reported that by the end of the last year already four out of every ten people had mobile internet subscription. So, there’s users but where are the services…

So, people are using their mobile phones, which are fast turning to be touch screen equipped smart phones, to access internet services. Still many companies are pondering what they should do with this kind of users and when some are taking some steps to serve their customers and clients, they are still too often taking the most easy path: just putting some static content online. Well, that’s a start but that also tells that companies are not thinking what the users really want or look. Mobile users are not passive users but willing to interact. Before rushing to set up simple static mobile site, please, take a look at this damn good presentation and get back to your desk to think a bit more how you can serve your clients and consumers better. And if in doubt, or when wanna see things moving as supposed, contact us and get your biz into mobile age!