Mobile Internet growth

Mobile Internet growth is the growth of the Internet when accessed via a mobile phone, laptop, etc. Mobile phone connections are increasing more rapidly than purchases of any other consumer product, according to Tomi Ahonen. Since this article was published there were a number of announcements stating that half the world now had mobile phones. These articles are slightly misleading because the real story is that the number of phones has reached half the population of the world. In reality many people have more than one connected phone. For example in Italy the phone penetration is 133%, according to Morgan Stanley. The Mobile Internet data connections are following the growth of Mobile Phone connections albeit at a lower rate. In 2008 the Morgan Stanley report showed that phones with data connections were less than 20% of the total number of phones. However, this is still a large number of phones.

Regional variations

Many users in Europe and the United States are already users of the fixed internet when they first try the same experience on a mobile phone. Meanwhile in other parts of the world, such as India, their first usage of the Internet is on a mobile phone. Growth is fastest in parts of the world where the personal computer (PC) is not the first user experience of the Internet. India, South Africa, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia are seeing the fastest growth in Mobile Internet usage. To a great extent this is due to the rapid adoption of mobile phones themselves. For example, the Morgan Stanley report states that the highest mobile phone adoption growth in 2006 was in Pakistan and India.

China has 155 million mobile internet users as of June, 2009.

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