In The US, Mobile Internet Usage Is At Least One-Third And Maybe One-Half Of Wired Internet Usage

comScore (a company that I used to be on the board of and am still a large stockholder in) put out some interesting data on US mobile internet usage today. comScore has been the leading internet measurement provider for a long time. They bought M:Metrics, the leading mobile measurement firm last spring and now they are the leading measurement firm for both wired and mobile internet.

I thought it would be interesting to compare their data for both mediums.

Here's a chart from the post today about mobile.
Comscore mobile internet
 
So we know that 63mm users in the US access "news and information" on their mobile at least once a month.

But that is just for "news and information". Here's a chart that breaks down the most popular mobile categories:
Comscore categories
 
So we know that "news and information" is by far the most popular category of mobile internet usage. But social networking is growing much faster and has a significant audience (almost 10mm/month).

So I'd assume the total monthly US audience for mobile internet is between 70mm monthly uniques and 80mm monthly uniques.

Given that comScore reports that the "wired" internet audience in the US was 192mm monthly uniques, that means that the mobile audience is at least 1/3 and probably a lot closer to 1/2 of the wired internet audience.

What that means for developers of web services is that you cannot ignore the mobile audience, it's big, its growing faster, and someday soon it will be as big or bigger than the wired internet audience. That means making sure your service works well in mobile browsers and is available via apps for iPhone and other phones that support mobile apps, like Blackberry, Nokia, Palm, Windows Mobile, etc.

If I had a way of measuring how much time I used the wired internet and mobile interent every day, I am sure I'd find that I use the mobile web more frequently but for less total time than wired internet. But that too is changing as I spend more time on the mobile web every day.

One interesting stat is I have not added a photo to iPhoto in months where I have added a photo to flickr (where I post photos I shoot on my blackberry) almost every day this past week. My digital camera is mostly gathering dust these days. Someday that may happen to my macbook.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
#VC & Technology