The number of smartphone owners in the EU-5 (UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy) grew 41% between 2009 and 2010, to 60.8 million subscribers, according to a June 2010 report from comScore.
About 15 million of those users were in the UK, where smartphone ownership leaped 70% between 2009 and 2010, the Internet Advertising Bureau UK (IAB UK) reported. Further, the IAB calculated that mobile access accounted for about a quarter of time spent online by UK web users in mid-2010.
Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) also showed healthy gains in mobile web usage in 2010. Overall, 31% of UK web users ages 16 and older polled by ONS said they went online via mobile. Men were more likely to access the internet wirelessly, however; 37% of males said they used their mobile phone to go online, compared to 25% of females.
Google and Facebook remain the most popular mobile websites among UK users, according to comScore’s MobiLens.
Advertising on mobile
At the end of 2009, annual ad spending on mobile phones in the UK amounted to just 1% of the sum spent on all online ads aimed at PC users, comScore found. Similarly, the average ad revenue generated by a mobile web user was barely 3% of that generated by someone using a non-mobile platform to go online.
But mobile spending is set for meteoric growth. The IAB UK has forecast that overall spending on mobile ads will jump from £38 million ($53 million) in 2009 to £86 million ($120 million) by the end of 2011.
The July 2010 study found that 31% of UK consumers would be more likely to respond to ads in any medium if they could do so via mobile. Texting a keyword to a short code was the preferred response method. But visiting a mobile site or calling a phone number were also popular options.
Mobile is also starting to come into its own as a response channel for people who view ads. A recent “Mobile Consumer Briefing” from the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) and Lightspeed Researchreported on consumers’ attitudes to advertising with mobile response options in the UK, France and Germany. UK consumers in all age groups showed high levels of awareness that print media, cinema, radio, outdoor and in-store advertising typically offered mobile response mechanisms.
If you are interested to know more about mobile marketing try to join our next e-marketing & e-tourism conference on the 13th of december in Luxor,Egypt.
http://ioeti.org/2010_ioeti_conference/index.php
Reference: http://www.emarketer.com
Posted by: Hadeer Bahaa
www.ioeti.org
International Organization for E-Tourism Industry 
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