For all its faults—and, yes, it does have a few—the iPhone delivers the best mobile Web experience on the market. So it should come as no surprise that, according to recent research by M:Metrics, iPhoners access the Web through the device's easy-to-use Safari application far more than users of other smartphones do through their browsers.
So while 58 percent of smartphone users connect to the Internet for news and information, a far larger percentage, 85 percent, of iPhone users do the same, M:Metrics reports. Only 13 percent of standard cell phone users access the Web from their mobile handsets.
It's not just the superiority of Safari that's made the iPhone such a much-used conduit to the Web. The mini applications known as Widgets that Apple bundles with the iPhone and AT&T's unlimted plan for data access are important too.
"Our data shows that once the fear of surprise data charges is eliminated, mobile content consumption increases dramatically, regardless of device," said M:Metrics senior analyst Mark Donovan, while the "iPhone's widgets are an effective means to drive mobile content consumption"
"Two featured widgets, YouTube and Google Maps, are extremely popular among iPhone users: 30.4 percent accessed YouTube and 36 percent used Google Maps." By comparison, a mere one percent of all mobile subscribers overall accessed YouTube and only 2.6 percent used Google Maps.
Here are some additional things M:Metrics found out in its latest study:
74.1 percent of iPhone owners listen to mobile music, compared to 6.7 percent of the total mobile audience.
Eighty four percent of iPhone owners who use an MP3 player use an iPod.
31 percent of iPhone users view mobile video or TV, to 14 percent of other smartphone users, and 4.6 percent of mobile phone users in general.
74 percent of iPhone owners listen to music on their device, to 28 percent of smartphone users, and a mere 6.7 everyday cell phone subscribers.
"The iPhone has certainly delivered on its hype," observed Donovan. "Beyond a doubt, this device is compelling consumers to interact with the mobile Web, delivering off-the-charts usage from everything to text messaging to mobile video."
