Accenture: Mobile Devices Becoming Medium of Choice

By Rob Starr, Content Manager, Big4.com

According to Mobile Web Watch 2012, a study of consumers in Europe, Latin America and South Africa conducted by Accenture (NYSE: ACN),  the use of mobile devices to access the Internet is becoming the medium of choice, with more than two-thirds (69 percent) of all Internet users surveyed doing so daily.

In developed European economies, mobile Internet is also on the rise. In Germany, adoption of mobile Internet access via smartphones has tripled since 2010 (from 17 to 51 percent). In Switzerland, today 67 percent of respondents use Web-enabled mobile phones to go online, compared to 27 percent in 2010. In Austria, the percentage of mobile Internet users has doubled in two years (from 31 to 62 percent).

The study found that emerging economies such as Brazil, South Africa and Russia are front-runners in the adoption of mobile devices (more than 70 percent, on average) to access the Internet. Given their affordability, smartphones are more likely than other devices to serve as access gateways to the Internet in these emerging markets. This trend is set to continue, with a higher percentage of respondents in emerging markets expressing their intention to buy a Web-enabled mobile phone in the near future (Brazil, 78 percent;  Russia, 73 percent; Mexico, 61 percent; and South Africa, 57 percent) as compared with an average of 46 percent for all countries surveyed.

A growing ecosystem of mobile apps is fueling the rapid growth of the mobile Internet, providing consumers easy access to services they consider important. Seventy-one percent of mobile Internet users have downloaded programs or apps to their mobile devices. Information apps, such as train schedules, the weather, or news are the most popular, according to nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of survey respondents, followed closely by entertainment apps (70 percent). Eighty-five percent of the respondents said that the quality of the network was the most important factor in selecting a smartphone or tablet.