The mobile web has garnered a lot of attention in recent months and understandably so. Mobile phone ownership in Australia alone is over 90% (OECD Telecommunications Outlook 2007) although mobile use is still mainly focused on phone calls, with photography catching up. However, this is changing.
Opera Software - creators of the Opera web browser and the Opera Mini browser for mobile phones, has released a report - State of the Mobile Web: First Quarter 2008. This report outlines how 44 million users of the Opera Mini browser on mobile phones “spend their time when using the Web on their mobile devices”.
As libraries begin to look more deliberately about making their services mobile accessible, it is a good time to be reading research such as this.
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June 13, 2008 at 08:23
Use of mobile phones in the Australian population is very high
In the USA and Europe internet access via mobiles is a growing trend however relatively few Australians access the internet on their mobiles because of the exorbitant cost of mobile data transfer and this trend is not rising fast
As this is the case Australian libraries should probably not waste scarce resources on making their services mobile accessible in the next 12-24 months aside from SMS based services.
PS my sources are senior people in the Australian search engine industry who I’ve spoken to at conferences this year