Nielsen: Email still dominates mobile web usage

Despite the rapid growth of social networking behavior, email remains the dominant web activity among mobile phone users in the U.S., accounting for 41.6 percent of Americans' mobile Internet time--up from 37.4 percent a year ago--according to new research issued by The Nielsen Company. Portals follow in second, accounting for 11.6 percent of mobile web usage, off from 14.3 percent in 2009, while social networking increased from 8.3 percent a year ago to 10.5 percent. Nielsen adds that mobile music and video/movies both experienced year-over-year activity share increases in excess of 20 percent, corresponding with a comparable decline in news/current events and sports destinations.

By comparison, Nielsen reports that Americans now spend 22.7 percent of their time on the traditional web visiting social networking sites and blogs, up from 15.8 percent a year ago--a 43 percent annual increase. Online games passed personal email to become the second most heavily used activity, representing 10 percent of all U.S. Internet time, and email dropped from 11.5 percent of time to 8.3 percent.

"Although we see similar characteristics amongst PC and mobile Internet use, the way their activity is allocated is still pretty contrasting," said Nielsen analyst Dave Martin in a prepared statement. "While convergence will continue, the unique characteristics of computers and mobiles, both in their features and when and where they are used mean that mobile Internet behavior mirroring its PC counterpart is still some way off."

For more on the Nielsen study:
- read this release

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