Mobile Internet growing exponentially

The number of U.S. cell-phone users who accessed the mobile Internet daily in January reached 22 million, double that of a year earlier.

“Consumers have more and more choices, and they're finding a pretty good experience using the mobile Web,” said Mark Donovan, a senior analyst at ComScore.

The number of people using the mobile Web to access a social networking site quadrupled to 9 million, Donovan said, and the number of people who used the mobile Web to trade stocks or access a financial account nearly tripled to 3 million. (Phones might be useful for panic trading.)

Usage is increasing commensurate with the popularity of smart phones, Donovan said. The number of people with smart phones increased 81 percent over the past year, to 24.8 million from 13.7 million.

That trend probably will continue as phones drop in price. ISuppli, an El Segundo, Calif., research concern, predicts 11 percent growth in global smart phone sales in 2009, even as the overall mobile handset market slogs along. And Juniper Research predicts that smart phones will account for 23 percent of all new mobile phones by 2013, as demand for complicated applications draw consumers to more technically savvy handsets.

Popular content also is driving the on-the-go Internet numbers, Donovan said, as media properties such as CNN and Google perfect their mobile sites. That has motivated phone users without smart phones to start using the mobile Web too, he said.

This is all good news for advertisers, who are struggling to find an effective place to reach people in a year in which their budgets are significantly smaller. Donovan says internal ComScore studies have found that ads viewed on mobile phones can have higher click-through rates than those viewed on computers. Some mobile ads are viewed by users who are otherwise difficult to reach, such as those who don't use computers as much and mostly check the Web on their phones, he said.

Half of males 18 to 34 access news and information via the mobile Web, according to ComScore.

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