USA Tops for Mobile Web Browsing and Payments, Says Bango

By Editor Wireless and Mobile News on March 12, 2009 11:12 AM

The USA now has top slot for mobile web browsing with 29% of the worldwide traffic, according to data released today by Bango. The growth in traffic is being matched by the growth in users paying for content on the mobile web.

When it comes to payments though, the US is accelerating faster than any other country and now accounts for 57% of payments worldwide.

The publicity behind the Apple iPhone has encouraged more people to browse the mobile web in countries such as the US and UK. But this increase in mobile browsing has taken businesses by surprise as many don't have mobile websites.

The February Bango statistics identified mobile web browsers from a total of 208 different countries and using 1,811 different handsets. View a sample of the mobile traffic going through the Bango system at http://bango.com/live/. As of this writing the top carriers were 02 in the U.K. and Sprint in the U.S.

The statistics also show that while some countries such as India and Indonesia have a good appetite for browsing on their mobiles, it doesn't always convert into purchases. No matter how high the browsing rate, it is only converted into a high purchase rate where people have a good disposable income and can pay for content on their phone bills.

"Many people simply have no idea that they have visitors from mobile devices accessing their PC website - these mobile visitors are simply invisible to them," continued Malhotra. "Part of the problem is lack of awareness and to help, we have created a short video at www.bango.com/mobiletracking which explains how you can get a good grasp of how much mobile traffic you have."