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India sees two-fold jump in mobile web usage: Study

According to data compiled by UK-based Bango, the number of people accessing Internet in India through cellphones has more than doubled last year.

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NEW DELHI: India is emerging as a forerunner in using the cellphone as a tool to access the Internet, with one in every 11 people logging on to the web across the world through mobiles turning out to be an Indian.

The number of people accessing Internet in India through cellphones has more than doubled in the past one year --making the country home to the fourth largest population browsing the World Wide Web through their mobile handsets, says a new survey.

This also marks a fast evolution of mobile phones from a tool to make calls and send messages to a platform to seek information on cyber space.

According to data compiled by UK-based Bango, which tracks the users from over 190 countries accessing the mobile web, UK is the largest country in terms of the number of people accessing websites on mobiles, followed by the US and South Africa at the second and third positions.

A total of 27 per cent of users logging onto the web through mobiles come from the UK, while 21 per cent come from the US. South Africa accounted for about 11 per cent of the mobile web users at the end of April this year, Bango said.

While Indians account for just nine per cent of the total number of mobile web users, it has grown considerably from four per cent a year ago, the company informed.

"India, with a population of just over 1.1 billion and lack of an established fixed phone line network, relies on mobile phones to stay in touch," Bango CEO Ray Anderson said.

Bango said it expects the mobile phone usage in India to exceed European levels within the next few years.

"We see that wherever flat-rate mobile data charges are pervasive in a country, then there's much more web browsing," Anderson added.

The company identifies users by their country and network of origin and the ranking is arrived at by measuring the number of user visits to mobile websites from each country.

Indonesia is the fifth biggest country, representing three per cent of the worldwide users accessing websites through mobile handsets.

Bango said the data also confirms the emergence of the US at the forefront of the mobile web growth, with a three-fold increase in usage over the last year, though it was still behind the UK at the second position by volume.

"The US is set to become a significant market, and this increased usage of the mobile web as a means for accessing content is an encouraging signal of future growth," Anderson said.

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