BMRB: women abandoning mobile phone Net services

Women are deserting mobile internet services in droves. New research shows that in the first quarter of this year, the percentage of women who accessed the Net on their mobile phones crashed from 18 per cent to 11 per cent.

The figures, from research company BMRB’s latest quarterly Internet Monitor study, also show that the percentage of men using the internet on their mobile phones remained static at 19 per cent. BMRB conducted its research in May 2005.

BMRB director Paul Milsom suggests the findings indicate that the mobile internet is failing to catch the public’s imagination, and that consumers are still uncertain about the services available and their future.

But access via a personal computer is still growing strongly. BMRB found that a quarter of all media time during the three-month research period was spent on the Net, which is outranked only by television and radio. Radio, though, is closing the gap. On an average weekday, internet users spend two hours and ten minutes online, up from two hours three months earlier.