"Mobile Internet use is growing while the number of people going online via a PC is slowing, analyst firm Nielsen Online has found." Thus begins a recent BBC article.
"Some 7.3 million people accessed the net via their mobile phones, during the second and third quarters of 2008. This is an increase of 25% compared to a growth of just 3% for the PC-based net audience - now more than 35 million,” it continues.
Well, better give up on the PC then, and get cracking on business models to make money off mobile, shouldn't we?
It's amazing that a reputable news organisation and a well-known research firm publish introductions like this, as if the numbers should be cause for surprise. As if they're "news".
Woof
Three out of every four people there [in North America] are Internet users. The rest are probably too young to read, or too old to see.
Ivo Vegter, Freelance journalist and columnist
It would have been news if, with total user numbers of 7.3 million and 35 million respectively, the growth in mobile users was lower than that of desktop users. As they say in the trade, "dog bites man" isn't news, but "man bites dog" is. They're just stating the bleeding obvious. It's called "growing from a low base".
Take another statistic as an example. Between 2000 and 2008, the growth in the number of Internet users was almost 10 times higher in Africa and the Middle East than in North America, according to internetworldstats.com. The former grew by 1 031% and 1 176% respectively, while the latter grew by only 129% during this period.
What does that tell us? Very little of any use.
First, they're not annualised growth rates. Actual growth rates are 41.4%, 43.9% and 12.6% respectively. This reduces the impressive factor of 10 to a factor of only three-and-a-bit.
Second, there are only so many people in North America (337 million, to be precise), and most already have Internet access, so the growth (from 108 million to 248 million) is actually quite staggering. Three out of every four people there are Internet users. The rest are probably too young to read, or too old to see.
Third, Africa and the Middle East combined, at 93 million users, represents only just over a third of the total number of users in North America.
Fourth, African and Middle Eastern users represent only 8% of the total population, so the high growth rate is certainly off a low base.
Fifth, although the growth stats in the Middle East and Africa appear to be similar, they're not. Not at all. In Africa, the eight years saw the number of Internet users grow from 0.5% of the (2008) population to 5.3%. In the Middle East, it went from 1.7% to 21.3%. So the latter's growth is much more significant. But you couldn't tell that from the raw growth numbers.
And finally, once you take into account the income per capita of Africa and the Middle East, compared to North America, you'd have to conclude that in terms of market opportunity, the former are significantly less cash flush.
So, what has 10 times higher growth rate got us? A mere handful of users with less disposable income.
Something's missing
To return to the BBC report, the same goes for the UK's mobile users. The report notes there are far fewer mobile phone users (7.3 million) than PC users (35 milllion), and that they're younger. What it omits to mention, however, is how much each user uses their device. I also use my phone for Internet access. Occasionally, briefly, if there's no alternative, and usually for a specific purpose. According to the report, British mobile phone users run seven 10-minute sessions a month. You think British PC users are online for 70 minutes a month too? Why doesn't the report tell us?
The report notes with surprise that BBC News is the most visited site, instead of Google, which rules the desktop. This is just the BBC bragging, of course. Why should it be surprising, when BBC News is set as the default home page on most mobile phone-and-browser combinations? Why should it be surprising when going through search results is comparatively hard on a small screen? Wouldn't you go directly to what you need, or what your phone volunteers, if you had no alternative to mobile access?
So, all we've learned here is that a mere fifth of Internet users occasionally use a mobile phone for some Internet access, and they're not online very much.
That "mobile Internet usage is on the rise", as the cherry-picking headline trumpets, is useful knowledge in the same way it's useful knowledge that not everyone in Limpopo province has cholera, or some people in Zimbabwe aren't poor.
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