Figures released by comScore have revealed that mobile search has grown in leaps and bounds over the last year. Google, expectedly, is the leader in mobile search services and has more than 60% market share in all the countries where the survey was conducted.
According to comScore, 20.8 million users in the U.S. and 4.5 million users in Europe used mobile search in the month of June 2008. This means that there has been a 68% and 38% growth of mobile search over the last year in the two regions respectively, which is phenomenal.
Google has stated in the past that they believe that mobile search would soon generate the highest advertising revenue, and they have moved accordingly to lure mobile phone users.
Presently, Google is already the default search provider for handsets by Sprint in the USA, T-Mobile in Europe and NTT DoCoMo in Japan and also for the iPhone. Their own mobile device, the Android phone, will further boost Google’s market share and revenue generation.
Yahoo! is next in popularity for mobile search and advertising services and holds about 35% of the market share in the U.S. They are the default search engine on AT&T handsets, except for the iPhone and are planning to provide some new services by the end of the year.
9.5% of mobile users in the UK use mobile search services and 9.2% of cell phone users in the U.S. do the same, and these numbers are expected to go up.
Among the main reasons for the recent growth of mobile search would be the easy availability of smartphones, better 3G penetration and the introduction of flat rate data plans.
It is reported that along with the number of users, the frequency of mobile search has also increased. comScore analyst Alistair Hill says “The number of people accessing mobile search at least once a week grew 50% in Europe, with France and Spain leading at 69 and 63 percent respectively.”
