BPN 1042 1-in-5 Dutch internet users mobile online

According to the Dutch central statistics bureau (CBS), more than 2 million Dutch internet users went online with mobile devices, such as laptop or a smart phone, in 2007. That is almost 20 per cent of all the Dutch internet users. Especially male users and highly educated young professionals are mobile online. The internet connection is mostly made by 13 per cent of the internet users with a laptop, equipped with a mobile modem; 8 per cent use a smart phone and only 3 percent is using a palmtop.

Of the men going online 24 per cent accesses internet by mobile connection. Of women only 14 percent linked to internet by mobile. Men use mobile online more often than women, 12 per cent against 4 per cent. But more than 30 per cent of the highly educated professionals, younger than 45 years, use mobile equipment online over against 7 percent of older and low trained people. Of course this pattern in mobile online is also common to fixed line internet.

Mobile internet will be much helped by mobile broadband. Market research bureau Forrester published recently a report with a forecast: 2007 saw mobile operators upgrading their 3G networks to 3.5G. At the same time, mobile operators started to introduce flat-rate mobile Internet access on a wider scale. To see if consumers will sign up for these services, we updated our Western European mobile user forecast. To do this, we interviewed mobile operators and vendors about the state of the market and analyzed consumer data. 3G will take the lead over GSM-only and GPRS phones in 2010. By the end of 2013, one-quarter of mobile phone users will have 3.5G-capable device. By that time, we expect 38% of mobile subscribers to use mobile Internet services at least once per month.

But Forrester also noted that the growing popularity of mobile internet is deopendent on mobile broadband. It forecasts that in 2010 more smart phone with a UMTS- (3G) or HSDPA (3,5G) connection will be sold over the slower GPRS ones. Of course also attractive subscription for mobile internet will be helpful. The mobile companies should take care of lumpsum subscriptions, more relevant services and a better user experience.
According to the Forrester researchers, Austria, Italy, UK and the Scandinavian countries are the precursors. It is expected that in 2010 more than 60 percent of the internet users in those countries have access to a fast mobile broadband connection. In Japan, The Register noted that from 2012 onwards only 3G connections will be offered by the telco NTT Docomo. From January this year the telcos have stopped to sell devices using a slower access speed.

Blog Posting Number: 1042

Tags: mobile internet