October 1st, 2009
Nielsen: Women, teens and seniors driving mobile web growth
Mobile web usage is on the rise. These days, though, it’s women, teens and seniors who are driving the growth, offering signs that the technology is growing beyond the early-adopter crowd and into the mainstream.
Mobile web usage was up 34 percent from July 2008 to July 2009 with 56.9 million users, according to a Nielsen report. But it was the year-over-year growth broken down by demographics that was most interesting to me. Teen usage was up 45 percent from a year ago and seniors surged 67 percent. Usage by women jumped 43 percent while men were only up 26 percent.
In my own family, mobile web usage jumped significantly, as well - and across the same demographics. (Scary, huh?) Last month, my wife and teen daughter became Blackberry users when Sprint announced its flat-rate unlimited everything package. My brother-in-law, who had been on our family plan, jumped ship, too, and grabbed a Sprint Blackberry - and has been streaming Pandora regularly since then. Even my dad, who recently retired and found himself shopping for a device to replace the company Blackberry, bought a phone through Verizon and signed up for a mobile web package.
Broken down by gender, men are hitting tech and sports sites most, places like Gizmodo, CNET, NBA, NFL and CBS Sports. Women, by contrast, head to People, Target, Facebook and even Horoscope.com. As for teens, they still prefer text and picture messaging.
Sam Diaz is a senior editor at ZDNet. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
Subscribe to Between the Lines via Email alerts or RSS.
