Aug 18, 2008

World - Entertainment most popular on mobile internet in BRIC

Research firm Nielsen has released a report on mobile Internet usage in BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries. The report shows that compared to the US and European markets, where mobile Internet is used mostly for information and news, BRIC markets are driven to entertainment content.

The report shows that the top five mobile site categories in India are games (visited by 38 per cent of mobile Internet users), email (33 per cent), entertainment (21 per cent), music (18 per cent) and sports (15 per cent).
In China, entertainment (55 per cent) tops the list, followed by games, music, news and politics, and business and finance. In the US and Europe, users are more interested in email, weather, search, news, sports and city guides.

The report also shows that mobile Internet penetration in India is 1.8 per cent, the lowest in a list of 10 countries. The US has the highest penetration at 15.6 per cent, while China stands at 6.8 per cent. The figure refers to the number of mobile users who have accessed mobile Internet at least once, and does not include web based email and instant messaging.

Commenting on the report in an official communiqué, Jeff Herrmann, vice-president of mobile media at Nielsen, says, “In the US and Europe, broad access to media and entertainment has been available for decades through a large fixed distribution infrastructure, and more recently in specialised devices like iPods, to meet consumers’ entertainment needs. Users in the growing BRIC markets haven’t had the benefit of broadbased content distribution, thereby limiting their exposure, and are filling the service gap by embracing the mobile’s transition into a personal entertainment platform.”

Herrmann adds that mobile Internet fills an important gap in homes and schools in countries such as India, where PCs are not easily accessible.

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