Research company comScore says the majority of people accessing mobile content through browsers and applications are now using smartphones. Its US-based research found that 55% of people using a mobile browser and 60% of those downloading a software application were doing so on a smartphone. Those figures were up year-on-year from 41% and 44% respectively.
Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile, said "That smartphone owners now represent the majority of the US mobile audience accessing downloaded applications and browsers represents a watershed moment in the industry. Although smartphones still make up less than a quarter of the US mobile market, they are generating the lion’s share of mobile content consumption. With smartphones’ share of the pie destined to get greater over time, marketers and content providers should begin to shift their focus towards developing with primarily these devices in mind."
comScore noted that most of the smartphone users are male – 56% of smartphone subscribers who used downloaded applications or used browsers – although female usage was up 5.5 percentage points on 2009. Weather, maps and social networking were the top content categories accessed through downloaded applications, while search, social networking and news were the most popular categories accessed through browsers.