A new study’s been released, that shows us exactly what people in the UK use the internet on their mobile phones for, according to IntoMobile. And unlike Japan, where the networks are struggling under the load of users looking at pictures of insert-your-preferred-gender-here‘s naughty bits, us users in the UK seem to use our phones for social networking more than anything else.
The study of 1000 people between the ages of 16 and 35 says that mobile internet usage is growing exponentially, and a third of that usage is people accessing Facebook and Twitter.
Shockingly (or not, depending on your viewpoint), the study also reveals that men are twice as likely to get online with their mobile phones as women are. I don’t find that particularly shocking, though, I have to say, because men (and I should know, since this describes me down to a tee) are generally far more obsessive about these kind of things than women are. That’s not to say there aren’t any female geeks out there, because there are (and they should be cherished and revered as they are awesome), but you look at any technology, be it mobile phones, cars, computers or the Large Hadron Collider, and I guarantee that most of the people slavering over it will be men.
Of course, the study does also highlight the possibility for this disparity in gender usage of phones might be down to manufacturers not making enough phones for women, although they do say there are notable exceptions to this. And you know who they mean. They mean LG and Samsung, because they 1/ make a lot of pink phones, and 2/ make phones that aren’t pink but look stunningly sexy, like the LG Viewty Smart, which both genders can appreciate the beauty of.
Oh, and the feature that most people have said they want on their phones is BBC iPlayer. That’d rock, but I can’t help thinking that both the data networks and data tariffs need a fair bit of sorting out before that becomes a widespread feature…
Do you use Facebook on your mobile phone? Do you think not enough gadgets are made for women? Leave us a comment and have your say!