Smartphones Propel Mobile Net Use

The acceleration of U.S. smartphone ownership has led eMarketer to raise its estimate for the number of mobile users who will access the Web from their devices in 2010 to 85.5 million, up from 83.5 million in the research firm's November 2009 forecast.
 
Put another way, eMarketer estimates about 28 percent of the U.S. population now accesses the Internet from their mobile devices, compared to just 17 percent in 2008.
 
By 2014, 142.1 million users, representing more than half of all U.S. mobile phone users and about 44 percent of the overall population, will access the Internet using mobile browsers or applications.
 
"Most consumers can hardly imagine going through the day without a mobile phone by their side," said eMarketer senior analyst Noah Elkin. "This reliance on mobile devices for just about everything makes mobile a platform that content publishers and marketers cannot afford to ignore."