How do Australians use their Mobiles

Mobile usage in Australia 2010

According to Nielsen, there is a big rise in smartphone ownership and relaxed download caps on mobile phone plans has seen an increase in mobile social networking:

• 43% of online Australians now own a smartphone
• over one quarter of social networkers (26%) participated in mobile social networking in the past year
• 66 % of mobile social networkers are under 35 years of age.

Networking sites accessed by mobile

Facebook is the most popular with 92% of mobile social networkers having visited Facebook, followed by YouTube and Twitter (18%) and MySpace (9%).

Twitter sees the most frequent mobile usage, with half of its mobile users visiting the site daily. In comparison, Facebook saw 36% of its mobile users visit the site daily, while 22% of MySpace users and 16% of YouTube users were making daily visits.

Mobile Usage in America

By way of comparison, Pew Research Centre published statistics on American’s use of the mobile. They don’t have stats on social networking sites but do show a significant increase in internet usage. Compared with a similar point in 2009, mobiles are being used to:

• Take pictures—76% now do this, up from 66% in April 2009
• Send or receive text messages—72% vs. 65%
• Access the internet—38% vs. 25%
• Play games—34% vs. 27%
• Send or receive email—34% vs. 25%
• Record a video—34% vs. 19%
• Play music—33% vs. 21%
• Send or receive instant messages—30% vs. 20%

Source Pew Research Centre – Mobile access 2010

References

Nielsen http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/global/australia-getting-more-social-online-as-facebook-leads-and-twitter-grows

Pew Research Centre http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Mobile-Access-2010.aspx