According to a new report from Telephia, 34.6 million US mobile phone subscribers accessed the Internet from a wireless device in June 2006. With eMarketer estimating the US mobile phone population at approximately 213 million in 2006, that equates to only 16% of mobile phone subscribers. Considering the widespread use of mobile data and Internet services in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, 16% seems remarkably low and once again confirms the US as being very much a PC-centric Internet market.
E-mail and weather sites were the two most visited Internet categories for mobile phone users, followed by ESPN, according to Telephia.
Alternative data from Forrester Research indicate that 18-to-26-year-olds are far more likely to use mobile data services than their older counterparts.
According to Telephia, 81% of Internet consumers have phones with browsers that support xHTML-MP, which allows for an enhanced Internet browsing experience that is closer to what consumers are familiar with on their computers. Data from the research firm show that the top mobile Web browser used in June 2006 was Openwave, followed by Motorola and Nokia.
The US mobile phone sector has always been something of a curiosity compared with other markets in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe. While average revenue per user is significantly higher in the US than in other markets, the percentage of revenue generated from mobile data or Internet services is remarkably low when one considers the ubiquity of the Internet in the country. It is certainly true that the increasingly popular "bucket plans" of voice minutes mean that it is usually no more expensive to make a voice call than send a text message in the US, compared with other markets, but this still does not completely explain away the relatively low percentage of mobile data or Internet users in the country.
While the slow rollout of next-generation networks in the US has meant there is little bandwidth on offer for sophisticated mobile services, the fundamental stumbling block for the sector, it seems, is that it does not encourage an independent mobile content sector. The DoCoMo model in Japan, which gives mobile content providers great incentive to develop innovative content and applications, does not exist in the US, and it is therefore unsurprising that not one of the 10 most popular mobile Websites is a unique independent mobile content provider.
One of the significant ways in which DoCoMo has developed such a flourishing mobile content sector is simply by paying the content provider in a timely fashion. According to eMarketer's mobile analyst, John Gauntt, "US operators are still scrambling to get their billing systems up to snuff for doing more than voice traffic."
While rolling out next-generation mobile networks may be one part of the mobile Internet puzzle, the other and perhaps more important part is developing an efficient billing and collection system. Once US operators have worked this out, then perhaps an independent mobile content sector will begin to flourish.