The iPhone is Stimulating the Mobile Web

Posted by: Jack Ewing on July 11

Market researcher M:Metrics published some interesting numbers today that confirm that the iPhone is helping to create a surge in usage of the mobile Internet—and challenging Nokia in the smartphone market. In France, Germany and Britain, 80% of iPhone users browsed the mobile Web for news and information, M:Metrics says. Among users of other smartphones, only 32% used their mobile browsers in the three months to May. Those numbers, which are consistent with earlier surveys in the U.S., seem especially significant considering that the iPhone hasn’t generated the same fervor in Europe that it has in the U.S.

The survey looks bad for Nokia, which still sells a lot more smartphones than Apple or anyone else. (Nokia’s N95 has twice as many users as the iPhone in France, Germany and Britain, according to M:Metrics.)

But how telling are the M:Metrics numbers really? I put that question to Nokia Executive Vice President Anssi Vanjoki. He maintains the numbers are misleading because iPhone users are still a relatively small group who have a nearly religious attachment to their devices. If mobile Internet usage looks lower for other smartphone brands, it’s only because those devices are more mainstream, Vanjoki says. In any event, he adds, the feedback from mobile network operators is that they are very happy with the amount of data traffic that the N95 and other Nokia smartphones are generating.

Vanjoki’s argument is plausible. Still, even he agrees that the iPhone is providing massive stimulus to development of the mobile Internet.