More Pinoys into mobile Web, says Yahoo!-Nielsen survey
Telcos could do well in improving mobile Internet services as more Filipinos are using mobile phones to surf the Web, results of a new survey showed.
From “virtually zero,” 5% of the estimated 29.7 million Filipino Internet users — around 1.5 million — are now using mobile phones or personal digital assistants to access the Internet, the survey commissioned by Yahoo! Southeast Asia Pte. Ltd. showed.
The face-to-face survey of 1,500 respondents in 22 major cities conducted by The Nielsen Co. (Philippines), Inc. last February showed a number of “shifts and trends,” with home Internet usage increasing at the expense of Internet cafés and work computers. But most respondents still use cafés for surfing, at 69% of the total. This was down from 71% last year. In contrast, home users went up to 31% from 27%.
More users are going to search engines (76% of respondents this year from 58% last year) than to e-mail sites and instant messaging.
Consumers are also doing entertainment-related searches for music videos, television shows and movie trailers. Meanwhile, online gaming users are down to 45% from 53%. Online radio listeners also went down to 20% from 28%.
More than half of survey respondents went to a social-networking site in the past month rather than to blogs or forums. “Friendster remains as the leading social-networking site with [an] 84% [share of users] compared with 92% last year. However, Facebook is not far with 83% this year compared with 4% last year,” Nielsen executive director Gerald G. Bautista told reporters.
“Attractive” tariffs are driving higher mobile Internet use particularly among young adults, usually for e-mails or instant messaging, Nielsen said. “The trend is predominantly because of the upper middle-class consumers,” said Mr. Bautista.
“Consumers are becoming impatient in surfing the Internet. Most of them want the results in real-time whenever and wherever they are,” said Yahoo! Philippines general manager Jack Madrid.
Sought for comment, Globe Telecom, Inc. corporate communications head Yoly Crisanto said more affordable packages would further drive up mobile Internet use. “As telco providers introduce more affordable packages like unlimited Internet surfing in a day, more consumers will do mobile Internet surfing,” she said.
The study revealed that 30% of the entire population have access to the Internet. The places with the highest Internet access are Metro Manila (40%), Tuguegarao (37%), and Olongapo (35%).
“The consumers’ habits are evolving. The demand for Internet surfing and the ways to access it are also evolving,” said Mr. Bautista. BusinessWorld
