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Americans Browse 4.6 Hours a Month on Smartphones, Brits Browse 2.5 Hours

In part due to social networking and internet commerce, smartphone users are spending an average of more than 4.6 hours per month browsing the mobile web in the US and nearly 2.5 hours per month in Britain, reports M:Metrics.

Among smartphone users in the US, mobile browsing has increased 89% year over year, and pageviews have increased 127%, M:Metrics said.

Among the findings issued, based on March data from the measurement firm’s metered smartphone panel:

• Active mobile web users in the US spent an average of one hour and thirty-nine minutes in March browsing Craigslist on their smartphone, the longest duration of any site among the top 20 domains visited.

• In the UK, Facebook commanded the most time spent browsing in the month, with visitors dedicating an average of one hour and forty-five minutes using the site, which also draws US users.

• In the US, Facebook ranks fourth in time spent browsing, after eBay and MySpace, with Disney’s Go.com rounding out the top five.
• In the UK, the remaining top sites by browsing time are the mobile operator 3’s portal, Sky TV, Microsoft’s Live and BBC.
• Each day they visited the site, UK Facebook users spent an average of about 19 minutes, compared with an average of 15 minutes for Microsoft Live visitors, 10 minutes for mobile operator 3’s portal visitors, 14 minutes for Sky TV and nine minutes for BBC visitors.
• In the United States, on the days they visited each site, consumers spent an average of 22 minutes on Craigslist, 29 minutes on eBay, 16 minutes on MySpace, 14 minutes on Facebook and 18 minutes on Go.com.

“Consumption is quickly evolving from brief transactions, such as checking the weather or flight status, to time-intensive interaction with mobile websites - even without an iPhone,” said Mark Donovan, senior analyst, M:Metrics.

“A primary factor in the discrepancy in the duration of time spent browsing between British and American smartphone users is the relative popularity of flat-rate data plans in the United States, where 10.9% of users have an unlimited data plan versus only 2.3% in Britain,” said Paul Goode, senior analyst, M:Metrics.

“Other factors to consider are the popularity of devices with QWERTY keyboards in the United States - where nine of the ten top smartphones are QWERTY, while the inverse in true in the UK - and the greater penetration of smartphones in the British market.”

Consumption of Mobile Content and Applications

Below, findings from the M:Metrics March 2008 Benchmark Survey of mobile subscriber consumption of content and applications for six countries (including the US and UK) and the EU: