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Previous figures had suggested that the recession was slightly dampening mobile web growth.  You would hardly know that from the latest Comscore  data showing that the number of people accessing news and information on their mobile devices more than doubled in the past year from January 2008 to January 2009.   (Tip of the hat to Warren Riddle)

Among the audience of 63.2 million people who accessed news and information on their mobile devices in January 2009, 22.4 million (35 percent) did so daily; more than double the size of the audience last year.  Here is a table from their press release.

That excludes access to social media but as Frank Reed suggests, the increased involvement with social media, whether Facebook, Twitter or some other is changing the way people, particularly those under 35, are accessing their online contacts and information.

“Over the course of the past year, we have seen use of mobile Internet evolve from an occasional activity to being a daily part of people’s lives,” observed Mark Donovan, senior vice president, mobile, comScore. “This underscores the growing importance of the mobile medium as consumers become more reliant on their mobile devices to access time-sensitive and utilitarian information.”

“We also note that much of the growth in news and information usage is driven by the increased popularity of downloaded applications, such as those offered for the iPhone, and by text-based searches. While smart phones and high-end feature phones, like the Samsung Instinct and LG Dare comprise the Top 10 devices used for news and information access,  70 percent of those accessing mobile Internet content are using feature phones.”

In January, 22.3 million people accessed news and information via a downloaded application. Maps are the most popular downloaded application with 8.2 million users, while search was the overwhelmingly favored use for SMS-based news and information access, with 14.1 million users. Overall, 32.4 million people used SMS to access news and information in January.

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 than last.

Related articles by Zemanta

• 3 Reasons Why Mobile Browsing Doubled Last Year (jkontherun.com)

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 at 4:03 pm and is filed under Cell phones, Mobile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.