Yesterday’s M:Metrics statistics on iPhone usage show that the iPhone has become the most popular device for accessing mobile content. The figures are clear. The percentages of users accessing news, searching, watching video, visiting social network sites and listening to music are significantly higher than those for the remainder  of the mobile market and even noticeably higher than for other smartphones.

The big question is why? Mark Donovan from M:Metrics says…

"this device is compelling consumers to interact with the mobile Web".

But is it just the device itself? Donovan goes on to explore another factor…

"…another important factor to consider is the fact that all iPhones on AT&T are attached to an unlimited data plan… once the fear of surprise data charges is eliminated, mobile content consumption increases dramatically, regardless of device"

I also suspect there are also other factors. For example, I have often seen different volumes of (the same) application usage across different device types (UIQ, S60 and Windows Mobile) well out of step with the number phones of each type in circulation. I believe this has been more to do with the type of person that buys each type of phone

iPhone users may just be a self-selecting group (currently early adopters?) who are people who want and expect to access the Internet from their phone. The bigger question is whether this can scale to the mass-market, either via the iPhone or forthcoming iPhone lookalikes.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 6:09 pm and is filed under Mobile. Both comments and pings are currently closed.