ICTs

Accessing the internet by mobile phone in France

Accessing the internet by mobile phone has evolved dramatically over the last two years and shows signs of becoming a real market that will impact the way consumers will receive information and make decisions. The number of mobile phone users in France accessing the internet has grown by 23% from 2005 to 2007 to reach 16%, according to a recent study by Ipsos Media. This increase is not the result of equipment: the market share of internet-enabled mobile phones sold in France has remained roughly steady at 48% between 2005 and 2007. The increase results from the growing acceptance by new socio-demographic categories of internet access through mobile phones. While the under 35-year olds still represent the majority of users in 2007, their share has declined to 66% in 2007 versus 74% in 2005. The 35-49 year old category now makes up a quarter of internet-over-mobile users.

The trend has major impacts on amount income spent on mobile-internet services. While low-earners, notably students, still make up the largest single user-group, their share has increased by just 2% points over the two years to 27% in 2007. Above-average income earners now represent 40% of all users. This is reflected in content. In 2005, the two most popular internet services used by mobile phone owners were downloading logos and ring tones (5.3% of users) and accessing SMS and chat-email services (4.3%). Only 3.6% of mobile phone users accessed the internet for practical information services like weather, traffic, etc. In 2007, the three categories (logos, SMS/chat and practical information services) were roughly equal in terms of internet access at between 9.2% and 9.9%. Two categories that were practically inexistent in 2005 began to make in-roads: news and gaming captured the attention of about 7.5% of mobile phone users accessing the internet in 2007.