The future of the web is mobile. However, the web analysts at Royal Pingdom have found that mobile web usage currently is spread unevenly across the world. The geographical areas that are accessing the web via mobile phones at the highest rates today actually aren’t Europe or North America.
Based on data from StatCounter for October 2010, Asia and Africa have the highest share of mobile web usage. And as Royal Pingdom quips, “It is a bit ironic that mobile web usage, is relatively speaking, lower in Europe and North America than in much of Asia and Africa. At least when you consider all the attention that Android, iPhone, and smart-phones in general are getting over here.”
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The data in this report gives only averages, and obviously some countries within these regions have much higher rates than others. There are several countries in Africa, for example, that have mobile web usage below 10%. But many others have mobile web usage in excess of 20%. Chad, for example, has close to 29% and Nigeria has just over 25% of web usage coming form mobile phones.
Similarly, there is a disparity between mobile web usage across Asia, with countries like India and Bangladesh having about 15% mobile web usage.
Currently mobile makes up about 3.81% of web usage worldwide. But as many parts of the world do not have either the infrastructure for wired Internet nor access to other computer devices, mobile phones are the technology of choice.
And in most of these places, the phone of choice is Nokia. According to Royal Pingdom, “in every single one where mobile web usage makes up an unusually high share, Nokia’s Symbian OS completely dominates. In some countries more than 90% of the mobile web traffic comes from Symbian phones.” Android, iPhone, and Blackberry OS have very small market shares in many of these countries.
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