Mobile Web Use Small But Growing

Web traffic from mobile devices remains low with 1.3% of all page views in December for North America.  But a new study by Quantcast found that the share of Web traffic attributed to mobile devices has increased 110% in North America and 148% globally in the past year.

Quantcast suggests that the accelerating development of devices, operating systems and browsers is driving the growth.

While Apple's iPod has a dominant 60% share of mobile page views this is being eroded by emerging competitors in the smartphone market. The Motorola Droid captured almost 4% share in its first full month, overtaking the Palm Pre. The Droid has also helped Google's Android operating system surpass the BlackBerry OS with a 12% share of North American mobile Web traffic.

Quantcast is predicting that mobile's share of page views in North America will increase to 2.3% in 2010.  Globally, mobile's share will increase from 0.95% to over 1.8%. A host of new devices from manufacturers Motorola, HTC and BlackBerry will fuel that growth this year.

So Where Do Mobile Users Go?
According to the Nielsen Company, Google Search was the top mobile property in December:

• Google Search - 28 million unique visitors
• Yahoo Mail - 23 million,
• Facebook - 19 million.
• Gmail - 18 million
• Weather Channel - 14 million

The overall U.S. mobile Internet audience was 62 million. The top mobile brands are roughly the same as overall Internet brand leaders.

Watch for Google search to gain even more as their efforts to provide search suggestions based on location and click-to-call mobile ads mature and gain acceptance.